Many times during the day I would stop and examine this gooey feeling in my heart and wonder what it was doing there, making me feel warm and fuzzy all day long. Then it would strike me: because I was with Aanchal. People argue that the honeymoon period is heady, but I knew this was more. I wasn’t so much drawn to the excitement of the newness, but the possibility of spending the rest of our lives together. I must have lived a thousand futures together. I was the Doctor Strange of love stories, sifting through every possible future for us, bending time and will. We could take a billion paths together; some would absolutely crush us, but even then, they would be paths taken together.
And then, it all came crumbling down.
Aanchal likes to paint me as a pro-life traditionalist who would make women bear children against their choice. Maybe that’s how she sleeps better at night. But she couldn’t understand that no one, literally no guy she would ever meet, not even she, knew more intimately what it was like to raise a child than me. I had lived it, day in, day out, as a twenty-year-old. All I had asked her for was nine months. Nine months to carry the child, to give it life, and then she could hand it over to me. Even if she birthed the child, gave the cute one wrapped up in cloth in my hands and pranced away to the airport in her hospital gown to live a life on her own terms, I wouldn’t have minded in the slightest.
But she couldn’t sacrifice those nine months.
She likes to argue that she was not ready for a relationship, but I know that’s nonsense. I hadn’t conjured up the love I felt for her in those forty-three days. She loved me. She stayed up nights, wrote me letters, sent me video confessions of her love. I could feel her love in the touch of her fingers, in the look of her eyes, in the way she lit up when we met, in the tremble of her voice, in the nimbleness of her gait. She might have raised walls around us a million miles high, but I know that caged within those walls was a heart that beat for me. I could hear it pump even beyond her fortified walls of career, ambition, future.
Was that all untrue then? Of course not.
She took a selfish decision.
Because that’s what she is—a girl with no sense of sacrifice and who holds on to her own happiness like Gollum screeching, ‘My precious!’ Did she not know what I thought about children? About my history with Rabbani and how caring for her had saved me and given me purpose?
After I dumped her, I thought I would lose my way. And I did but it could have been far worse had I not made a friend. An unlikely one at that.
Gaurav, and his parents, think I saved Gaurav from oblivion. Far from it, it’s Gaurav who saved me. Watching him play video games is, and always has been, one of my greatest joys. I have watched him play with aggressiveness, concentration and dexterity unmatched by anyone. His spatial awareness, his reflexes, are once in an era. Aanchal once asked him why he had to share his earnings with me. After all, he was the one with the talent. He could make it big on his own. And she was right. Gaurav doesn’t need me. It was just dumb luck that I happened to be in the right place at the right time.
When I break out of my reverie, I see on the screen that a crowd has gathered in the mandap, and it’s aglow with the sacred fire burning brightly. And in the crowd, I spot her. Dressed in a sparkling pink lehenga that hangs alluringly just below her waist, her hair cascading in dramatic curls over her shoulders, while a glitteringtiklidangles from her forehead. Every time she moves to shower rose petals on Aditya and Vanita, my eyes flit to her bare midriff and I wonder what it would be like to touch her again. I don’t know if it’s the drugs in my system, but my entire body feels alive thinking of her. Every time I look at her, I feel reduced to my most basic of evolutionary biology. To find a thing a beauty, because not all beauty is conditioning—Aanchal is beautiful by any standard.
When the camera pans, I see Vanita and Aditya walking towards the mandap. I feel a sharp pang in my heart. The camera follows the two—they keep stealing glances at each other as they walk. They are showered with petals, Aditya’s friends are hooting in the background, and Aanchal’s piercing whistle penetrates through the loud cheers. She’s encouraged by the aunties. She slips in two fingers and whistles harder.
When they sit, the light of the ceremonial fire lights up their faces. Their happiness is so complete, so pure, so palpable, I can feel its warmth all the way in this cold hospital room. The pandit starts to chant. The Sanskrit verses are unintelligible, but I can feel their power seep into the air around me. Two souls getting intertwined forever, their lives now one. It’s the beginning of something magical. In a person’s life, can there be a decision more powerful, more courageous, than deciding to share your life with someone? If the world is a stage, as people like to say, then you’re an actor, and the one you’re married to is your audience, your cheerleader, your director, your co-actor, the reason why you exist. We like to pretend that careers and personal milestones are important, but we forget it’s all make-believe. Would the world be a better place with twenty-minute deliveries of daal-khichdi? Or would it be better if all of us found someone who loves us and accepts us truly as their own?
Vanita and Aditya’s happiness feels bittersweet for me. When I look past them, I see Aanchal again. And for a moment, it looks like she’s looking straight at me. Of course, she’s not. The camera has just caught her. But she doesn’t look away. Her gaze lingers as if she can look through the lens, the mysterious Internet waves and the pixels of the tablet, and then straight at me.
In the forty-three days I had spent with her all those years ago, I had learnt to recognize each of her expressions, and this one was unmistakable.
This is one of love, longing or regret.
Or all three.
14.
Aanchal Madan
I had been steeling myself not to feel anything.
Vanita’s wedding, Vanita’s marriage, it’s her new beginning. I should just feel happy for her and not let myself get carried away in the wave of emotions. When she gets up from the mandap, Vanita seems to be a new woman. Her fingers intertwine with Aditya’s, she looks powerful—the exact opposite of what I thought she would seem. Marriage is surrender. And yet she looks bolstered by it. As if now, forged in the ritual fire, she has access to Aditya’s courage, strength and intelligence too.
My gaze shifts to the camera, the one that’s live-streaming the wedding to all the guests who couldn’t make it today. Daksh is among them. Even though the link says there are fifty-four viewers, it feels like he’s the only one on the other side. I can almost hear his voice in my ear, full of love and pain. ‘This could’ve been us,’ he whispers. My heart aches at his words, but a little voice in my head whispers back, ‘It could still be us.’
Every time I blink, my heart wages war against my mind. My heart conjures up an image of Daksh in a black kurta, hair perfect as it always is, his sharp jawline glistening, his eyes as watery as they can get, a small smile on his face. It’s warmth and sex and comfort all rolled up into one. My heart reminds me how alive I felt, how deep was the happiness, how fuzzy the comfort, how passionate our touches.
Daksh likes to think I severed all ties with him with the coldness of a serial killer. That’s how he sees me. First, I got the abortion, and then I walked away from him as if it were nothing.
But he saw none of the nights I spent crying for him. He doesn’t know of the searing longing I felt for him for months on end. He knows nothing of the crushing pain I felt, the long hours I used to stare at the phone waiting for his call, the envy I used to feel looking at other couples and how my heart used to break every time he used to talk to Gaurav and all I wanted him to say was,Hi Aanchal.
I felt starved of his love.
It was like he got me addicted to the drug that was him and then left me to deal with the withdrawal cold turkey. After the anger of his abandonment petered out, all I felt was pain. A sharp piercing pain that wouldn’t go away and became a part of my being. Every other happiness paled in comparison. Sometimes I think if Daksh didn’t work with Gaurav, it would have been easier to get over him. Because now I saw Gaurav and Daksh become best friends and then brothers. I could see how much love Daksh was capable of, how much love I could have received from him but missed out on. If he could love Gaurav, a legitimate stupid person, so much, how much would he love me? Every time Daksh stayed up nights driving Gaurav from one gaming competition to another, cooked meals for him so Gaurav wouldn’t get lethargic during sessions, made his bed, laundered his clothes, took care of him—it all made me burn with envy.
I could see what we could have been. He would have been perfect.
Had he come back, would I have accepted him? In a heartbeat. They say your idea of love is shaped by what your first love story teaches you. My first love story, which I know is with Daksh and not Vicky, taught me to wait. Wait for time to heal all wounds and for the love story to start.
As Vanita steps down the stage and comes to hug me—her first time as a married woman—my heart feels full to see her happy.
