by Sonali Dev
But Javed missed it anyway and turned to Mili like an excited child with a secret to share. “Mili-bhabhi, Sam-Sir has been acting so strange-like since he came back from America. Full-on Devdas mode—total sad-song types. You know what he did today?”
“And Mili, this is Lily Auntie. You’ve met her. She keeps my house for me.” Samir cut Javed off without a hint of his usual Samir finesse.
“Hello, Lily Auntie.” Mili returned Lily’s smile and turned back to Javed. “So, Javed-bhai, you were telling me what Sam-Sir did today.”
Javed got so excited he forgot his camera-ready smile. “Arrey, Mili-bhabhi, it was full-on drama. He just got out of the car in the middle of Mumbai-Pune highway and started walking.” Javed pushed his arms out and did an incredibly accurate imitation of Samir’s guy-with-humungous-biceps swagger. “This long the traffic jam was”—he motioned a great distance with his hands—“but Sam-Sir’s face was even longer. I tried to stop him. But where was he listening? He just took off. Two hours it took before I picked him up. Still walking.” Javed walked his fingers across the air in front of him.
Everyone turned to Samir, shaking their heads and laughing. But Mili couldn’t breathe.
“Mili-bhabhi, Javed is right. Ever since Sam-Sir came back from America, he’s been all down-in-dumps.” Lily made a thumbs-down sign and smiled. “Usually, he’s all tip-top. Clothes, room, everything doing shining. Now. Nothing. Everything all over the place.” She shook her hands to indicate Samir’s nothingness and tears pushed at Mili’s eyelids.
Samir pulled himself to his full height. “Lily Auntie, let’s save some of these fond stories for later, shall we? Rima needs rest.”
Rima didn’t seem to think she needed rest, because she turned to the teenage girl cowering behind Lily. “Mili, this is Poppy,” she said in a softer voice, throwing the skinny girl a gentle look. “She’s Lily Auntie’s granddaughter. Samir’s taken care of her since she was a little girl. She just moved to Jamnagar with us. Now she’s going to help me take care of my baby. Right, Poppy?”
“Unless Sam-Sir needs me here. Then I’ll come back,” Poppy said with a debilitating lisp that made it hard to understand her. She gave Samir a look so worshipful, the mood in the room changed.
Lily dabbed her eyes. They mirrored Poppy’s devotion.
Samir’s entire body went utterly still, in that way it always did when he was overcome with emotion.
How had she thought she knew him so well? There was so much about him she didn’t know. The Samir who had dragged her to the wedding. The Samir who had raced to make samosas with her. The Samir who had branded her body, lain prostrate under her in total surrender. The Samir who had taken all responsibility for what happened between them, absolved her of all blame, when really she had wanted him more badly than she had ever wanted anything in her life. That Samir she knew. It had been hard, but that Samir she had been able to shut out with the force of her anger.
But this Samir who stood before her with his staff and his family, whom he allowed to walk all over him with such ease, this Samir, whom everyone seemed to love with such fierceness, was far more dangerous than the one who had made her forget everything she had been before him. This Samir with his unkempt clothes and his desperately hopeful eyes was making her forget the agony of the past months. He was making it hard to go on believing that the incredible generosity he had shown her, his innate gentleness, had all been an act to get what he wanted.
He smiled at Poppy. And Mili knew without a doubt how wrong she had been. It hadn’t been an act, none of it.
Mili turned to Poppy, her throat working to push back tears, and gave her a quick hug. “Hello, Poppy. Rima-bhabhi’s baby is so lucky to have a didi like you.”
Poppy’s face lit up with pride. She turned to Samir, clapping her hands, and he knew with absolute certainty that he was never letting Mili go. He would do whatever it took to make her see what she meant to him. He would follow her to the ends of the earth.
She searched his face, cocking her head to one side as if she were trying to gauge what he was thinking.
I love you. That’s what he was thinking. He wanted to mouth it to her. He wanted to whisper it into her lips, into every secret place in her body. He wanted to scream it out in front of the entire world.
She didn’t look away. For the first time since she’d come back she held his gaze. It was equal parts fear and hope. And that something else she saved only for him sparkled at the edges. He would bring it back. Whatever it took he would bring it back.
She leaned back into Rima’s bed and suddenly everything disappeared from her eyes except horror. The beat of his heart stopped. Mili held up both hands. Her palms were completely red with blood. She spun toward Rima just as Rima’s head lolled back and her entire body went limp.
Mili had never seen a grown man cry. Virat slumped on the bench next to his brother and wept like a baby. Not for long, just for a few moments, but it was the most heartbreaking thing Mili had ever seen. Samir sat there with his arm around his shoulders and said nothing until he stopped. When he finally spoke, his face was carved in stone but his voice crackled with hope. “She’s going to be fine, Bhai.”
Mili leaned against a wall across from them in the private waiting room and watched Virat wipe his eyes. She should have felt like an intruder but every time Samir looked at her she knew there was nowhere on earth she needed to be but here.
After Rima had started hemorrhaging they had rushed her into surgery. That had been three hours ago. The huge wooden clock ticked away on the wall. Baiji paced the room, a tattered copy of the Bhagavad Gita clutched in her hands as she chanted verses under her breath. Every few minutes she stopped and pressed a hand into Virat’s shoulder.
Mili walked up to her and eased her into a chair. She sat down at her feet, took the book from her hands, and started chanting where she had left off. Her naani had taken her along whenever anyone in the village got sick and she had sat with the womenfolk and chanted the peace mantras for hours even when she was too young to know what they meant. The same peace she had felt back then settled over her as her voice sang out the familiar Sanskrit syllables.
Baiji placed a hand on Mili’s head, leaned back, and closed her eyes. Virat and Samir joined her on the floor. Sitting cross-legged next to her they joined their palms and closed their eyes. The whispered sounds of their voices blended with hers. The strength of their joint prayers intertwined and wrapped tightly around them and shut out the ticking clock, shut out everything but their words and their hope.
Hours or maybe it was just moments later a knock sounded on the door. The heavy curtain to the room lifted and the doctor walked in. She waited for them to finish the verse before she spoke. “Rima is out of surgery,” she said directly to Virat, who jumped up. “You have a baby girl. She’s healthy and stable.”
No one could breathe. They waited.
“Rima?” Baiji asked, and Virat made a pained sound.
The doctor patted Virat’s arm. “We’ve stopped the bleeding. The next few hours are critical, but if she doesn’t start bleeding again, she should regain consciousness. You can see her as soon as they have her settled in the ICU.”
“Can I see my baby?” Virat rubbed his eyes with his fingers and Samir squeezed his shoulder.
The doctor smiled. “They’re setting her up in the incubator. She’ll need to be there for at least a week. But she is one strong girl with very strong lungs.” Her phone buzzed and she glanced at it. “You and one more person can go see her now.”
Virat and Baiji followed the doctor out of the room. The moment they were alone, Samir slumped into a chair and dropped his head into his hands. Without thinking about it, Mili sat down next to him and placed a hand on his arm.
That’s all it took. He turned to her, dug his face into her shoulder, and started shaking. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him closer. There were no tears, no words, only utter relief for his niece and absolute terror for Rima.
He laughed and slowly the shaking stopped. His breathing steadied. For a long while he stayed right there in her arms, as she whispered nonsense words into his hair, soaking up everything she was pouring into him. How did he do that? How did he have the courage to lay himself out in front of her like that at every turn, knowing full well she could push him away? Had pushed him away. Hearing his voice, looking at him, touching him, it still hurt, but pain wasn’t all she felt. And what she did feel gave her the courage to not push him away again.
Mili heard Virat enter the room and her eyes flew open. She was bent over Samir, her head resting on his. His face was pressed into her lap. They had fallen asleep like that in the waiting room. She straightened up and found his fingers entwined in hers and tenderness bloomed in her heart. Virat cleared his throat. Despite the shadows under his eyes and the weariness etched into his face he looked amused.
Mili withdrew her fingers from Samir’s and he shifted awake. He sat up, his overgrown hair pushed into disheveled peaks, the embroidery from her kurti imprinted into his cheek above the stubble. He gave his brother a look filled with such hope, every remnant of resistance inside Mili crumbled to dust at his feet.
“Rima woke up,” Virat said. “She’s going to be fine. The doctor is with her right now. You want to go see your beautiful niece?”
Samir threw his arms around Mili and was out of the room before she could react.
Virat sat down next to Mili.
“How is she?” Mili asked.
“She’s wonderful.” His voice shook with relief and Mili’s nose started to run. “You can go and see her when the doctor leaves. She asked for you, you know.” Virat plucked a tissue from a box and handed it to her. “Mili, do you mind if I say something?”
Mili blew her nose into the tissue and nodded.
“When I met Rima, when I married her, I didn’t know I was still married to you. If you hadn’t sent that letter, I would never even have known. Baiji had filed a petition with the village council telling them the marriage was illegal the year after it happened. But our grandfather retracted it from the council and never told us about it. He was a real piece of work, our grandfather.”
She remembered how terrified she had been of the man, with his towering height and his perpetual scowl under that huge snow-white mustache.
“Chintu’s really the one who should tell you this but all I’ll say is that the old bastard blamed Chintu for losing his son. And his means of punishment . . . well, let’s just say if Baiji hadn’t taken us away from Balpur my brother might not have survived to put that look on your face.”
A pained sound escaped Mili’s throat. The memory of Samir’s sweating body writhing in the throes of a nightmare seared through her mind. She bit the inside of her lip to keep the sobs from slipping out, but it didn’t work.
Virat plucked another tissue from the box and handed it to her. “My brother would do absolutely anything for me. And I would give my life for him. But the only reason he came looking for you, the only reason I didn’t do it myself, was that my plane crashed. I was in a coma for a week and then flat on my back for months after that.”
At least let me explain what happened, Mili.
Why hadn’t she let Samir explain?
She could no longer keep the sobs inside. Virat let her cry, handing her tissues as she turned them into soggy blobs one after another.
“Poor Rima, how many months along was she when you had your accident?” she asked. No wonder Samir had wanted to do whatever it took to protect Rima.
Virat smiled. His eyes crinkled up exactly like Samir’s did when he smiled. But his smile didn’t have that earth-tilting quality to it. Then he laughed. “The only other person I know who would ask a question like that after what I just told you is Chintu.”
He patted her head and pulled out another tissue. This time he used it to wipe the tears on her cheeks. Then he lifted her chin with his finger and looked her straight in the eye. “I’m sorry I wasn’t the one who found you and set things straight the way I should have. But Mili, please don’t punish my brother for my mistakes.”
30
The huge glass window framed Samir’s magnificent body. Sara had sent over fresh clothes with Kim and he was back in one of those T-shirts of his that always looked brand new. Right now, though, a blue hospital apron covered the T-shirt. A blue hospital cap held back his overgrown hair. Mili had helped him push the thick, freshly washed locks into the cap, and their silken imprint still made her fingertips tingle. The look in his eyes as he searched hers for how she felt had made her heart stutter and shoot sparks into her belly.
How did she feel? How could anyone feel with a sight like this to behold? A man this beautiful with a tiny, wailing creature in his arms. His entire body curved around his hold. Every cell spoke of infinite gentleness. Wonder poured from his eyes and the tiniest hint of astonishment kissed his smile as he mumbled words at the baby, who cared only about the sound of her own voice. The doctor had been right. This baby girl had some strong lungs.
He held her up so Mili could get a better look at her and winced when she screamed in his ear. Then he pulled her to his chest and started to sway to calm her down.
“It’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it?” Baiji too had showered and changed and looked renewed. Now that Rima was fine the new day did really feel like a new day.
Mili smiled but she was too shy to go on looking at Samir the way she had been. She hoped Baiji hadn’t noticed the yearning tearing at her heart.
“He looks almost invincible, doesn’t he? So big and indomitable. Not many people can see beyond that,” Baiji said in that beautiful old-world Hindi of hers.
Samir turned around to show them that the baby girl had finally quieted in his arms and Baiji squeezed her knuckles against her temples to ward off the evil eye. “Believe it or not, I actually remember your face from the wedding.”
Mili turned to Baiji and found her smiling—that at once firm and soft, wrap-you-in-her-sari smile that had her boys mesmerized.
“I wish I had been able to stop it. I know it’s the way our people have done things for generations but you were even younger than I was. I was seven when they married me off. And unlucky enough to get my monthlies at ten. So I was packed off to the Rathods at ten. My only skill was to feed the cows and to count my uncle’s money while he stared at my budding breasts. Virat’s father was something I had never heard of. ‘A scholar,’ his family called him.” She smiled a smile heavy with memories and tinged with regret.
“The villagers called him cursed by the devil. His brain saw the world in particles and numbers and strings of energy. It was all he was interested in. So I adjusted my particles to match his. And I let him teach me to read. I became an obsession. He burned with the fire to educate me. I hated it. I did it the way other women learn to cook, desperate to find a way into his heart. Other girls burned their fingers, I dulled my vision reading and memorizing. My glasses made the man as deliriously happy as a new sari on his wife would have made another man. Those glasses gave us Virat.”
Baiji adjusted the glasses on her nose and her smile turned shy—the kind of smile Mili would never have imagined on her. “But who can fight fate? His hunger was greater than a doctorate. Greater than changing one girl’s life. Going to America, seeing the universities, the libraries there, it exploded his mind. It was America who took my husband from me. At first I cursed fate, fought with my gods for their injustice, but for him to have died without seeing what he saw, becoming what he became, that would’ve been the gravest injustice of all. And if none of that had happened, I wouldn’t have Samir.”
She placed a finger on the glass window, as if to touch her son and her granddaughter, and Mili found her own palm pressed against her h
eart. “When Sara first brought Samir to Balpur, he used to follow Virat and me everywhere. I was feeding Virat one day and he was watching us from behind the kitchen door, so I called him over and I fed a handful into his mouth too and he crawled into my lap and let me feed him. I used to sing a lullaby to Virat before bed, and I found Samir standing by the door, listening, so I laid him down next to Virat and sang to him too. One day he fell off the courtyard verandah and split his knee. I bandaged it and held him when he cried. That’s all it took. Three acts of kindness.”
She held up three fingers. “Three acts of kindness and he was mine forever. He never left my side after that. He helped me with all my chores. The devotion in those big brown eyes has never dulled for a moment over the past two dozen years. He recognizes love and lunges for it. And once he holds on to you, he will never let you go. His love is fierce and utter. But it’s not for everyone. Some people might find it overwhelming and turn it away.”
Mili knew exactly how fierce Samir’s love was, how utter. Four weeks with him, one night, and she knew she could never belong to anyone else. She placed her own fingers on the glass. This time she didn’t try to conceal the rampant hunger with which her heart craved him. For Samir to not exist. For what he and Baiji had to not exist—Baiji was right, Mili could think of no graver tragedy.
“That,” Baiji said, giving her a pointed look. “Whatever that thought was that just popped into your head. That’s your answer. That’s divine intervention, beta. The rest is all courage and choice.”
“Did you really put her to sleep by yourself?” Rima gave Samir an impressed look from her hospital bed, her non-ICU hospital bed, he reminded himself, thanking all the gods in the universe. It had been horrible to see her in the ICU. Here, she looked so much more like his bhabhi, relaxed and in control.
“Yup, the nurse told me I’m the only one who can quiet her when she starts bawling. I think you might be looking at the world’s best chacha.”
