by Vikram Bhatt
I stood up and engulfed her in my arms. She hugged me back, tight, hard. There was a need in her that I had never sensed before.
I ordered a latte for her and a cappuccino for myself. She played with the fork and I stared at her. I wanted to ask her if she was all right but that would have been a really stupid question under the circumstances. ‘How are your parents holding up?’ I asked her instead.
She shook her head and said nothing for a long moment, then sighed and allowed a tear to flow out. I stretched my hand across the table and held her hand. She did not hold it back.
‘A death is like a marriage in a way,’ she said lost in thought. ‘All these people pour in from everywhere and your house looks like it will explode with guests. Then one day they are all gone and you realize that your home is empty of people but filled with a new kind of life. Last night, Mom, Dad and I met that life. A life without Akshay.’
I decided not to interrupt her. I realized that she had to do this on her own and there was nothing I could do to help her.
‘I lay in bed for what seemed like hours,’ Mira continued to speak without looking at me. ‘Then a little after midnight I heard a crash and I ran out to find out what had happened. In the kitchen, Dad lay in a pool of water and shattered glass. The refrigerator door was open and I figured he had fallen trying to fish out a bottle of cold water from it. That was not the scary part. The scary part was that he did not find the need to get up from there. Like he was happy being on the floor with all that water and glass strewn around. I rushed to him and began to help him up. He did not respond, just lay there.
“Come on, Dad, get up!” I said to him but he would not listen, or could not listen; instead he looked at some nothing over his head and whispered, “It’s all over. He is gone.” I ran to my mother who helped me get him to his feet and together we put him to bed.
‘Back in my room and restless in my bed, I began to think what Dad meant when he said that it was all over. What was over? Then it came to me. All his dreams of Akshay carrying on his legacy were dashed forever. I had never really considered myself a candidate for upholding any kind of legacy and have lived my life one day at a time, without any responsibility. Dad and Akshay had always treated me like a kid who needed to be pampered at all times. But now everything has changed, Veer, and I am the only one who can do something about it.’
I took a deep breath and nodded. The waiter brought the latte and the cappuccino. We waited for him to set the beverages down. He smiled at us, received no smile in response from us, did not care much and left.
‘I can imagine what your father is going through, Mira. Losing a son at his age, and one who was poised to carry forward all his hopes and dreams, must be really hard.’ I realized that I was trying to make some kind of emotional connection with Mira and failing at it horribly. She was stonewalling me.
‘Veer, I have decided to be everything Akshay was going to be for my father. I am going to take his legacy forward. I am going to be his daughter and his son.’
I waited for more; I knew there was more.
‘I am going to Singapore to take the business forward,’ Mira looked me in the eye and did not flinch as she mouthed the words. She was all determination. ‘Akshay was going to be the CEO of the international food business that Dad had dreamed of for the longest time. I am not going to allow that dream to die.’
I was finally beginning to understand what this was all about. Mira was going to Singapore and she had asked to meet me to tell me that things were going to change between us. I smiled and held her hand once again, ‘You are doing the right thing, Mira. I am proud of you. Don’t worry about us, about you and me. Singapore is not far and I can come and see you at least once every month, and I am sure you will come to Mumbai to meet your parents. All this hullabaloo about long-distance relationships not working is just nonsense. If we love each other we can make everything work.’
She did not respond, and this time she slowly pulled her hand away from mine, this time she did not look me in the eye. ‘I can’t be in this any more, Veer. You and I . . . it was beautiful and I know that I will never be happy like this ever again. I know that no one can make me feel like you do but I need to be alone. I have to do the right thing, and with you in my life I am always thinking of how to balance things between what I want to do for my father and what I must do for you and me.’
Her words flew across the table and stabbed my existence. My fears had been right all along. They had seen this coming. I felt my heart racing and a painful twitching on one side of my head.
‘Mira,’ I said, trying to be calm, ‘you are right about wanting to do everything for your father that Akshay was going to do. You are right about wanting to be a son for him but you are wrong in thinking that to do one thing you need to sacrifice the other. You are just really upset and not seeing this clearly. Give it a week . . .’
‘Don’t patronize me, Veer. I am not an idiot. I have not come here to give up on the love of my life over a whim. I have thought this through more than you can imagine,’ Mira would have usually shouted these words but she was stoic in her stance and this scared me even more.
‘Mira, if you think I am going to stand in between you and your goals, then you have read me wrong. I am here to see you soar, not tie you to the ground. I want to be there for you. I love you.’
Mira did not notice that she had begun to cry and her tears were staining the white tablecloth to a dull grey. ‘I love you too and I will always love you but what you don’t understand is that this is not about you, this is about me. What I dream for us and what I must do for my father can never go hand in hand. I cannot be distracted by my love for you, I don’t want to be with you when I should be in Singapore. I don’t want my mind running off thinking of you when I need my wits about me. I don’t want to marry and have kids. This love, our love, just drags me to want a world that I cannot afford to want any more, Veer. The life that I had, the Mira that I was, is gone. She died on a ferry in Switzerland and never came back. I am someone else. I am someone who cannot indulge in the luxury called love. Love is for those who care little for anything but love; I can’t be that. I need to care about everything else more than I care about love. Veer, I beg you, don’t make this more difficult for me than it is already, I beg you, just release me, please. I cannot fight you right now. I have the world to fight.’
Her mind was made up and there seemed to be nothing that I could say or do that would change it. I could barely breathe. The twitching on the side of my head had turned into a hammering and my heart had gone into a frenzy. I could not trust myself to speak, and then even if I were to speak there was nothing I could say. My entire life was in disarray. I couldn’t bear my pain and I couldn’t see her pain.
In that moment I knew what lovers feared most. They feared misery. Misery fed off happiness and there was no greater happiness than being in love. Misery had got Mira and me in her grasp and we were haplessly trying to free ourselves.
‘I am sorry, Veer, I must go now. I really must.’ Mira wiped her tears, stood up abruptly and, without waiting for me to say goodbye, left.
In her brusqueness was the clear indication that had she stayed a moment longer she would have softened and changed her mind about us. The twitching at the side of my head was so painful that I could barely see her as she walked away without looking back.
Was this not the same coffee shop where we had coffee for the first time? The night she took up for me to verbally assault that rude advertising fellow? We were so happy that day . . .
Somewhere I heard Misery laughing at us.
And all I could do was listen.
MIRA
Sunday evening
I couldn’t see clearly. The tears I had been holding back were blurring my vision. I stood at the portico of the hotel waiting for my chauffeur to bring the car around. A spanking new Audi came to a stop a few metres away from me and a quite-in-love couple stepped out, their eyes on each other, walking hand-in-h
and. Not too long ago, Veer and I had been like them. Did Veer remember this was the very same coffee shop we came to for our first date? I wondered if he remembered the night after Natasha’s party.
But there was no way I could ask him, especially now that I had shut the door myself.
My car was taking forever. Veer would be out soon after clearing the bill. I looked around and prayed, ‘Please, God, don’t let Veer come out until after I am gone! I can’t see him again, not right now. Please, God, let him take his time clearing the bill.’
My chest felt like a colossal weight was on it and something was stuck in my throat. What had I done? How had I done it? I had walked out on the love of my life, the man who had done everything to keep me happy. I couldn’t get that look out of my mind—Veer in the coffee shop just a few minutes ago, trying to hold back his tears.
Asking me not to let this go. Not to let us go . . .
The lady in charge of security had her eyes fixed on me for a while. She could see me, pale and unwell.
‘Are you all right, ma’am?’ she asked me, looking genuinely concerned. I wasn’t even aware that my tears had been flowing uncontrollably.
I smiled through the tears and nodded, my voice coming out in a whisper, ‘Yes, I am okay. Just waiting for my car.’ I must have looked a pathetic sight trying to smile through the flow of tears. She did not seem convinced. I must have given her some kind of indication that I was going to collapse for she held my hand with a fair amount of urgency.
The human touch can be very dangerous for humans who are trying to escape the grip of a deep human emotion. In a flash of a second I found myself hugging the security lady and bursting out crying. Life came to a standstill on the portico of the establishment. The valets and the guests stood to stare at a crazed girl hugging a female security guard mumbling something incomprehensible.
‘Veer, Veer, Veer!’ was all I could I say between earth-shattering sobs. ‘Please, please, forgive me, I love you, I love you, I love you.’ The security lady did not know me but she seemed to know what pieces of a broken heart looked like, and she hugged me back like a mother would her child, and rubbed my back gently. I couldn’t stem the tide of woe and she did not placate me with any soothing words.
My chauffeur brought in the car at that precise moment. The security lady did not let go of my hand till she had made sure that I was safely sitting in my car. When I left I saw tears in her eyes too.
My chauffeur, the poor chap, had seen a lot of crying over the past few days and was perhaps numb to most of the drama, but he too was instantly concerned at seeing me in this state. He looked at me in the rear-view mirror while I tried to rein in my tears. He did not ask me where I wanted to go because he figured it was home. I instructed him to take me to Natasha’s house instead. He immediately complied. There was no way I was going to let Mom and Dad catch me so devastated.
Natasha led me straight into her room. She did not want her family lathering me with those uncomfortable comforting lines. Had it been a happier time I would have congratulated Natasha on her emotional quotient. On this day I could think of no one but Veer.
The flickering lights of the city through Natasha’s bedroom window reminded me of the evening when Veer and I had first met. I had to get one thing into my head: from this point on everything was going to remind me of Veer.
Natasha lit her favourite warm vanilla candles, tucked me into her bed and turned the lights down. She informed my parents that I was with her and wouldn’t be coming home. She laid a loving hand on my back as I turned away from her and looked at the endless night ahead. I could hear her checking her messages on her cell phone. She was more there for me by not trying to be there, I was glad I had such a friend in her.
I closed my eyes.
Veer took me in his arms on a cold mountain in Switzerland and we kissed. I laughed in the vision of our yesterday.
I cried some more in the darkness of our tomorrow.
The office was finally limping back to normality. It was a fortnight since Akshay had passed away. Dad had stayed away from work for two whole weeks, but grief when it refused to leave became a habit, and he was now getting used to it.
I had told him of my decision to take Akshay’s place and run the Singapore office. He was moved. He had to still believe in my capability to do what Akshay could have done but he was stunned by my effort to face life head-on.
I was sipping my coffee while going through some legal papers in my office when Dad dropped by. I looked up and smiled at him. In response, his best attempt at a smile came out like a grimace. I could not bear to have another discussion on Akshay so I pretended to bury my head in the papers in front of me, but he was not going away. He sat on the chair across from my desk and played with a paperweight. The conversation was inevitable. I sighed and looked up at him.
‘You want some coffee, Dad?’ I tried to make it sound mundane.
‘No.’
‘What is it, Dad?’
‘Did you have any plans for your life before Akshay left us?’ The question hammered a nail through my heart. I wanted to scream, ‘Hell yes, Dad! I was two days away from introducing you to the love of my life and we had planned a lifetime together!’ Instead, I mumbled a barely audible ‘No,’ and shook my head. My eyes brimmed and a tear betrayed me. I wiped it with a determined hand.
Dad’s voice became softer, ‘Are you sure you are not breaking any of your dreams to make my dreams come true? I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if that was true, Mira.’ Dad had my respect for being perceptive, though my eyes, red and puffy with all that sobbing earlier, could have given him an easy clue.
I shook my head and lied, ‘No, Dad, I was going through life without a plan. Doing this for you and more importantly for Akshay is the first plan I have ever had.’
‘You swear?’ he asked sincerely.
‘Oh God, Dad! Are you going to do a Mom on me now?’ I threw up my hands in mock exasperation.
Then for the first time after the tragedy, I saw Dad laugh. I laughed too.
It was a late-night flight and I convinced Mom and Dad not to bother with the airport bit. Natasha had offered to see me off.
All through the time that I packed my things for an indefinite stay in Singapore, my eyes kept glancing at my cell phone that lay on the bedside table. There had been no call from Veer and no message either. He must hate me for what I’d done to him, to us. I would have hated me had I been in Veer’s place.
The problem with love is that you don’t even realize when you begin to live the schedule of your loved one. You know their time to leave for work and plan your gym routine and the morning phone call accordingly. The lunch breaks, the little window between meetings, the weekend planning, and before you know it your life moves to the rhythm of another life. In my life the rhythm was gone, and yet I was living to an imaginary schedule that Veer might be keeping. Now he should be having his coffee, now he must be on his way back, and those were the times I thought I would get a message or a call, but nothing came.
On the bright side, Veer was saving me the agony of a continuous confrontation. Then suddenly, the phone rang. My heart skipped a beat. It was Natasha. She was on her way to pick me up.
‘Isn’t that Veer?’ Natasha’s tone was between surprise and shock. I looked up from my passport to find Veer standing at the departure gate of my flight. Through the windshield of Natasha’s car, I could see his lean form illuminated by the bright yellow of the sign that read Singapore Airlines.
In a flash it all made sense to me. Veer had decided to see me one last time instead of calling or texting me. He knew that trying to meet me when Mom and Dad may be around would do him no good under the present circumstances; the airport was his only chance. Yet, how did he figure I was flying out that night?
Natasha swung the car into the passengers’ parking bay. ‘Go ahead, talk to him, I will take care of your bags in the meanwhile,’ she offered.
I nodded and mumbled a ‘thank you’
and walked towards Veer.
He looked sad, worn out, but he smiled his boyish smile. I tried to smile back but I’m not sure it looked like one. I had never had to put so much effort into a mere smile in all my life.
‘I haven’t come to say goodbye,’ he went straight for the jugular, his smile intact.
A half-baked okay was my response.
‘I haven’t come here to ask you not to go. I am here to ask you not to let us go.’
I could see his eyes moisten and the smile was beginning to crack under the weight of his grief.
‘Veer, please, let’s not do this again. I beg you.’
‘Mira, you are choosing when you don’t need to choose. I am not standing in the way of what you must do for your family. I am not stopping you from taking Akshay’s place. All I am asking is for you to understand that I am not a part of the problem. I am part of the solution. What we have is special. Please don’t break us up. We are special and this special won’t happen again.’ I could hear his voice choke with emotion and I felt like my heart would break into a thousand pieces all over again.
I wanted to reach out and hold him tight, shower him with kisses, tell him it was all going to be okay, but instead I found myself saying, ‘Veer, I cannot explain my reasons to you all over again. There are only two choices here, you either understand me or misunderstand me. Just remember, I will never love again like I have loved you.’ My breath was coming in short gasps now.
‘And that is supposed to be a consolation for me?’ he sneered.
‘Veer, I am not that girl, I am not your forever person. There is another girl out there waiting for you. I am just a mistake.’ I did not care if the tears were flowing now. I could leave him but I couldn’t pretend that it did not matter.
