by Durjoy Datta
She writes the last paragraph of the letter:
Chautala told me today why am I here. The question I was battling with, the answer everyone wanted from me. Yes, at first I wanted to be here because I knew you would wake up soon. But then as days passed by, my hopes started to crumble, but I stayed on because even if you flicker an eyelid I want to be around to see that, even if you moan in pain, I want to hear that, even if you move a little finger, I want to be around . . . I don’t want to miss a thing. (Reminds me of the Aerosmith song, but it’s so true.) Wish I could sing it to you but my guitar isn’t that great, and my fingers are small and stubby, and I can’t sing. So instead I just want to tell you that I’m waiting. Just give me a sign that you’re in there somewhere and I will for another century.
Always yours,
Avanti.
Happy Seventeen Months.
She folds the letter, sprays it in body mist, puts on the tracks she wore the day Devrat met with an accident and sits next to Devrat’s bed. She reads the letter aloud. By the time she’s done, the letter is wet with her tears.
She starts humming one of Devrat’s song, and it reminds her of Devrat’s croaky voice . . .
Please wake up.
Twenty-Eight
Today, she completes seven months in the hospital waiting for Devrat to wake up.
Avanti is aware of her insanity, and that makes her less insane, and more acceptable to people for it makes them feel they are better off than her in terms of dealing with grief.
The recent changes in Devrat’s body are painful to look at, and he keeps shrinking every day, his muscles are wasting away, the skeletal frame is visible at places, signs that his body has given up and it’s only a matter of time that the monitor will show a flat line. But Avanti has decided that she won’t leave the hospital without Devrat. She has now become used to the life she leads with Devrat, the silent boyfriend who just listens, never complains, never shouts, and is not interested in any other girl. What more can she ask for? She’s used to coming back to him after a long day of work and talking to him about everything that happened during the course of the day. They are so domesticated now that Avanti doesn’t feel like writing the letter this time. It’s like any other relationship; she has started to take him for granted and she’s sorry for it.
She takes out a piece of paper and starts to write down the letter when Ram, the ward boy on her floor calls for Avanti. A patient’s relative wants to meet Avanti and she can’t turn that down.
Avanti keeps a little busy these days.
It started out as Avanti’s inability to stop herself from talking to everyone, but slowly the doctors and the nurses realized it took Avanti just a few conversations to become indispensable to the families she would talk to. Within a few hours she would become a sibling to a girl losing her father, or a daughter to a dying woman whose son is still in the US. People, both patients and relatives, would long for her, and talk to her about her story.
Sometimes a stranger can soothe you more than your own relatives. So now, she spends entire days talking to the patients and their relatives.
Often, the conversation would veer to Avanti’s own story and Avanti would tell her story from beginning to end, a story of hope and love and disappointment. She makes everyone meet Devrat.
‘This is Devrat,’ she would say. ‘He’s going to wake up soon. It’s been months now, but I’m sure he’s going to wake up some day and tell me that he loves me.’
And the patient/relative/nurse would just look on, not knowing what to say.
‘You’re a very strong girl,’ they would eventually say and feel a little less worse about their own condition.
The entire hospital now knows Devrat and their love story is quite the legend in the hospital. And whoever new is admitted knows about the story, either from one of the nurses or from Avanti herself. It doesn’t give them courage to face their own situation but it tells them that they aren’t alone. They would listen to Avanti’s story and Avanti would listen to theirs and there would be tears and hugs and smiles. They would tell each other that it will be okay, and even if it’s not okay, it will be okay.
The hospital staff and Chautala noticed how people changed around Avanti and Chautala offered her a position in the payrolls of the hospital. Avanti insisted it would be wrong to charge for it, or treat it like a job, but Chautala reminded that no matter how pious your work is, you still need to get paid for it.
‘I do it for selfish reasons,’ says Avanti.
‘What selfish reasons?’
‘It gives me someone to talk to. If I don’t, the sadness just crushes me. I force myself to be happy around other people and sometimes I forget that I’m not happy,’ says Avanti.
‘That’s the most unselfish, selfish reason I have ever heard. Moreover, if you don’t do it, someone else will, but they wouldn’t be as good. I can’t let you do it for free for I don’t like my employees being underpaid,’ Chautala had said and bulldozed her into accepting everything for free at the hospital. She now has a lot of things she doesn’t need.
‘Dare you call me an employee? I don’t want to talk to anyone thinking it’s my job!’ Avanti had protested.
‘Fine, don’t. I’m sorry. Now pour me another cup of tea,’ Chautala had said.
The new batches of interns have come today and they are waiting for Avanti in Chautala’s office. It’s kind of a tradition here and Avanti is the mascot of the hospital, the happy face even under distress.
‘You’re using me,’ Avanti had told Chautala on one of their chai dates.
Chautala had frowned. ‘No, I’m not. It’s like saying NGOs are in a business. You’re helping people and I like that. I didn’t get into this business thinking I would only earn pots of gold. I wanted to help people but somewhere down the line it got lost. The bottom line, the profits, the shareholders, started to mean everything and then you came along . . .’
‘And?’
‘I realized one needs great doctors and great facilities to run a hospital, but one also needs people like you, ones who can heal people.’
Avanti hadn’t said anything to that. She had just broken down in tears thinking of Devrat.
Today, she’s sitting in the middle of a batch of enthusiastic new interns who are all waiting for Avanti to introduce herself.
‘I have spent the last five thousand hours in this hospital waiting for someone to wake up. He has been sleeping for seven months now and I haven’t had the courage to walk away from him. All of you have chosen a career which doesn’t only put you next to God, but also next to a lot of disgruntled devotees. I am one of those devotees. I have blamed God and I have blamed doctors for Devrat’s condition and I have a full right to do so. Over the years you will find many like me who would have lost a lot. A stillborn child, a loving father, a nagging mother, a belligerent brother . . . you need to be there for them in their darkest moments. It’s hard and I know you will get depressed seeing so many people break down around you and it’s something you didn’t sign up for, but if you spend those ten extra seconds with the relatives, it will just tell them that you tried your best and you’re equally sorry. That’s all they need. Just an apology,’ says Avanti. And as she says this, every conversation she has had with anyone who had lost someone in the hospital comes rushing to her head and she starts to choke a little.
She has seen sixty people who have died in the past six months. Six of them were newborn children and there’s nothing more painful to see a mother holding her stillborn child. It makes you want to curse God and question his ways. It’s just cruel.
The cries of their relatives fill up her head and she starts to tear up. She tries to shut those out and think about the happy smiles she brought on the faces of people and narrated those incidents instead.
The three-hour long session ends with smiles and hugs, and the interns thank Avanti for bein
g such an inspiration.
‘She’s not a doctor but she’s better than many,’ says Chautala.
‘He’s just being kind,’ says Avanti humbly.
‘No, you are,’ a girl intern says.
‘And you’re so beautiful,’ another girl says.
The boys are slightly awestruck so they keep quiet. Avanti blushes and tells them that they are getting late for their next session. ‘If you ever need me, you have my number. Or I always have my lunch at two in the afternoon at the canteen. Feel free to join me there.’
The students nod and they walk out of there. One girl stays back and asks Avanti, ‘Is it tough?’
‘I die every day,’ mumbles Avanti.
Chautala asks the girl to leave. Avanti sits and pours herself a cup of tea. Chautala sits next to her and takes her hand into his. ‘I’m sorry, Avanti.’
‘It’s okay,’ she says. Avanti adds after a long pause. ‘I wish Devrat could just hear me a little and fight a little more inside and wake up.’
‘Medically, I don’t think Devrat has any idea of what’s on going around him. But in the scheme of the universe, it doesn’t fit well. Of course he’s listening to you,’ says Chautala.
Avanti nods.
‘Now don’t go around breaking stuff in Devrat’s room,’ says Chautala to Avanti who has a habit of wrecking Devrat’s room every few days in anger. There are times she can’t take the silence anymore. It’s deafening. There are days that a gaggle of nurses have to sit beside her and calm her down.
‘I will try not to,’ says Avanti.
‘You’re like the fairy godmother to the staff and the kids,’ points out Chautala.
‘Oh shut up, sir!’ retorts Avanti.
‘I’m sure you don’t think about it, but I remember seeing you when you first came here. You were nineteen and you behaved your age. Now you are years older than the twenty-three-year olds you just met.’
‘Don’t make me feel old now,’ says Avanti, but she does feel ancient.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay,’ says Avanti.
Avanti goes back to her room and stares at the empty piece of paper in front of her. She starts to scribble but words elude her. She picks out a book from the shelves around her and writes down the best lines from the books she has read over the last few months. By the time she’s finished she has already filled up four pages. She reads them over and over again and thinks she can’t do better than that.
She puts the letter in the envelope. A few nurses call Avanti out for lunch and Avanti joins them. It’s the usual party at lunch, the time when Avanti is all of nineteen and is the entertainer of the group. She laughs and jokes and asks senior doctors about their love lives, quizzes male gynaecologists about their boredom with vaginas and female doctors about the worst experiences during a hernia examination.
Today, she’s taking the case of a young, newly married female doctor.
‘So you’re telling me you haven’t ever been turned on during a hernia examination? Okay, imagine this. If Hrithik Roshan or Ryan Gosling walks into your room in nothing but a gown and he strips it off. His bulging muscles are staring at you, and he somehow has a raging hard-on. What would you do? Now you know that he likes you, because of you know, the hard-on, so what would you do?’
The girl’s blushing. ‘Don’t make me think about it! The next time someone comes for an examination, this is what I will think about, so stop it!’
The group starts to laugh.
The group that started with just a couple of nurses, a few relatives of the people admitted, has now grown to over fifty regulars, some members are transient and they leave the group when the patient they are with recover or die, but newer ones soon join in. Like today, the group of new interns pull chairs and join the conversations.
Avanti’s lunch-time table is the great leveller in the hospital. No one asks ‘why did it happen to me?’ because everyone has a graver story to tell. So everyone laughs and feels good, putting everything that’s on their mind behind them and concentrating on that one hour they get to spend with people like them. It’s their family for that hour.
The lunch break ends and everyone disperses. It takes Avanti another two hours to get to her room. On the way she meets Mrs Sharma, Mrs Ranjan and a few other young women with children who are suffering from cancer, and plays a round of seep and teen patti with them, and then plays Uno with the seven kids and loses intentionally. The kids and the mothers in the children’s ward love her and she loves them back!
She’s helped Arun, a thirteen-year-old with no more than a year to live, compose a text message to his crush, a healthy, gorgeous girl. Arun breaks down twice but Avanti makes him look at the bright side of it.
‘There’s no bright side to it,’ says Arun. ‘I’m dying in a year. It sucks.’
‘Firstly, we will not talk about that. Dying is no big deal. Everyone dies. You’re just getting there faster, which means you need to do everything faster. You should get this girl, fall in true love, and then fall out of it and dump her. And the minute she says anything, protests or cries, just tell her that you’re dying! She will not accuse of you anything! If you have to play that sympathy card, don’t play it to me, play it to her. Although if you do play it to me, I will be floored and be your girlfriend in a minute!’
‘Will you?’
‘Yes! You’re so handsome. But then again, I’m committed. Yes, he has been sleeping and he wouldn’t know if I cheat on him, but let’s not do it.’
‘But if you break up, will you date me?’
‘I will think about it,’ says Avanti.
‘But I’m dying,’ the boy says and starts to laugh.
‘Well played,’ says Avanti.
Avanti rushes through the rest of the wards and walks back to her own room. The door of her room is closed. She tries her electronic key but it doesn’t work. It happens once every week. The electronic key loses its charge and has to be recharged. At the nurses’ counter she gives her key to get it charged and the nurse exchanges it with a red one. Avanti doesn’t notice it at first but just when she’s about to swipe it, she notices the words on it.
‘Happy Eighteenth Anniversary
From everyone whose lives you have changed.’
A big smile shoots across her face and she opens the door to her room. She wants to show it to Devrat and giggle about it. But her room is no longer there. The wall between her room and Devrat’s has been brought down. It’s just one single room and it has been painted like a little cottage. Her bed is now next to Devrat’s and the room’s like the inside of a summer house of the rich. It’s tastefully done up, there’s a little cake on the side, candles have been lit up, and Devrat’s ventilator machines are hidden in cute little boxes. You can see the displays but the hideous colourless boxes are out of sight. Avanti’s fighting hard to keep back the tears.
‘It’s not my idea,’ says a voice from behind. It’s Chautala dressed in an opulent suit and behind him are at least fifty people with big smiles and little gifts in their hands. ‘It’s their idea. They wanted to do something for you.’
Avanti welcomes them inside, still crying and smiling and thanking everyone. The gifts range from books to little Gummy Bears to cute, little baby-socks (an obsession of Avanti’s). She’s already quite overwhelmed when Chautala gifts Avanti a gigantic scrapbook.
‘What’s this now?’ asks Avanti. ‘You know all this is already a little more than I bargained for.’
‘It’s just a little something from all of us,’ says Chautala.
She opens the scrapbook and flips through it. It takes her a little while to grab what it’s about and when she does, her fingers start to tremble. Each page of the scrapbook has pictures from the CCTV cameras of the hospital and it shows Avanti sitting next to Devrat, introducing him to a new friend that she made that day.
/> ‘Where did you get this from?’
‘I watched on the CCTV every time you got someone to meet Devrat. I watched their grief lessen every time you told them your story. And then you know, they invented screenshots. It wasn’t that hard,’ explains Chautala.
And beneath each picture is a quote from each of those people who met Devrat. On certain dates there are more than just one picture, and on some, there’s a lonely picture of just Avanti and Devrat.
‘You have been stalking me,’ Avanti tells Chautala.
‘It’s the best use of the CCTV cameras. These pictures are of love and hope. Not only for me, but for the entire hospital. We wanted to make it special for you. It’s to tell you how much we love you.’
Avanti smiles beneath her tears. She starts reading every quote and feels every day of the past year running through her body.
There’s a grainy picture of a ten-year-old who had come for an appendicitis operation sitting next to Avanti and Devrat, and beneath that is a quote from the little girl in her sketchy handwriting.
‘I remember Avanti di made me listen to Devrat’s song while we were in her room. The songs were average, but her love for those songs has made them the best for me.’
She moves to another picture, one of an old woman, who died three months ago at the hospital. Avanti looks at Chautala and Chautala tells her that they have been at this scrapbook for quite some time now. ‘It’s the least we could do.’
Avanti starts to read again. Chautala asks people to leave the room so that Avanti can go through the scrapbook on her own. Avanti thanks everyone and hugs every one of them before they leave.
She sits on the bed next to Devrat and starts to read loudly. She opens the page to the picture of the old woman who died and is holding Devrat’s hand in the picture. Beneath it are her words . . .
‘I’m dying and seeing this couple has made my going easier. It reminds of me when I was sixteen and got married. I was in love. So much in love. You make me feel like that, Avanti. And Devrat, you’re lucky. You’re a lucky, lucky boy. Come back for you’re missing the best thing in the world. I wish you get my life, whatever is left of it for I can’t see this girl suffer any longer.’
