‘I miss you, Daksh.’
I miss you.
Amruta’s words make my world stop.
Suddenly I feel the air get sucked out of the room, and I am gasping for breath. The words, said with the sincerity of a monk, the seriousness of a dying person, are brimming with love.
My heart breaks.
The words make me feel small, diminished, just a blurry background in the story of Daksh and Amruta, a footnote, to be forgotten. I’m no one in Daksh’s life story, just a mistake in the past.
It’s not just me, the others feel it too.
Vanita turns to me with a look of pity. Maa–Papa exchange a glance tinged with a sense of sorrow. Even Gaurav catches my gaze as if to tell me that Daksh and I were a missed opportunity and I would come to rue this in the future.
And when I turn to look at Daksh, his eyes looking softly at the screen, the small curve of his lips, I feel a sharp pain piercing my heart. A pin-prick that burrows deep and fills me with an all-consuming ache. My pain is punctuated by a squealing voice.
‘EW!’ say the kids together. They, too, have sensed what’s happening between Daksh and Amruta.
Daksh has an entire constellation circling him, and I’m alone, a dying planet.
12.
Aanchal Madan
No one moves from the waiting room till the time the doctor—whose son turns out to be a fan of Gaurav—emerges from the operation theatre, slips off his surgical gloves and tells us that the operation was a success. He adds that Daksh’s last words before he was put under were that his appendix be gift-wrapped and given to Vanita, which the nurse had to respectfully decline because medical waste is not allowed to be taken outside the hospital.
‘No part of him is waste,’ Gaurav says, ‘but you can keep it or dispose of it. But let me tell you, every bit of my friend is precious.’
Gaurav then gives the doctor a signed Nintendo Switch for his son, which he had someone send over from the hotel.
The doctor tells us Daksh will be unconscious for a while and will have to stay under observation for a day.
It’s decided that everyone will go back to the hotel except Gaurav, who will move into the room with Daksh. Papa offers to switch places with him in a couple of hours.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ says Gaurav rather dramatically.
Back at the hotel, everyone disappears into their rooms, to catch some sleep before thehaldiceremony, which Vanita had pushed by two hours.
I get into bed but sleep evades me. I toss and turn but all I can think about is Daksh. Maa–Papa talked to me on the way rather normally. As if their daughter hadn’t just robbed them of a chance of a granddaughter.
‘What did Daksh tell you?’ I had asked them.
‘Not to come between you and your dreams,’ Papa had replied without any hint of anger in his voice.
It’s strange Daksh is asking them to do what he couldn’t. But I can’t escape the undeniable truth: he said what he did to protect me. I put on my earphones and play some music to drown out my thoughts about him. It has the opposite effect—every song seems like it was written for us. Be it a love song, a heartbreak song, an item song— all I think about is how it’s about us. Nothing helps. After what seems like an eternity, I sit up and reach for my phone. I dial Rajat’s number and recount the entire sequence of events to him.
‘You should do what you want to do,’ he says.
‘That’s the most generic answer you can give, Rajat.’
‘And that’s because I’m done playing a part in life-changing decisions of yours, bro.’
‘You never had a problem before,’ I argue.
Rajat was the only person I could turn to when I held that pregnancy strip in my hand and the result stared back at me. I was twenty-three and pregnant. I had to end it.
I couldn’t have given up my freedom.
