I put the letter down on the table, the corporate jargon’s cruel. I have read many such letters for her, written many too. She looks up. Tears well up in her eyes, not falling yet, just shimmering. I don’t say anything. There is nothing to say.
The tears begin to fall. I walk up and take her in my arms, like I’ve done many times in the past year. Her body heaves into me.
She mumbles into my shoulder, ‘I don’t want it.’
I knew she didn’t want it.
And then, with tears coming down heavily, she keeps repeating it, her voice breaking with a raw, desperate agony, a mantra against the finality she can no longer deny, ‘I don’t want it... I don’t want it... I don’t want it...’
16
Aditi
‘Naman calling.’
I cut the asshole’s call again and find happiness in doing so. Happiness? Can’t really call it that, can I? Satisfaction, maybe.
He calls again and I cut it again.
‘Is it Naman?’ asks Raghav.
He’s sitting on the floor, trying to fix the robot vacuum he bought a few days ago. It worked for a while after he paired it with his phone but now it just bumps into things, unsure of where to go. A directionless robot. Raghav’s wearing an old college fest T-shirt with a hole near the shoulder seam. He’s probably going to try and throw it away in the next couple of weeks, I need to keep an eye on it if he does that. It seems pretty nice otherwise.
I nod. ‘The group is alive today,’ I tell him. ‘Anniversary... also people have started getting cheques. Some people are leaving the group too.’
‘Grief has a timeline,’ he says, like he keeps telling me and himself. ‘So does anger.’
He puts the vacuum cleaner aside and starts scrolling through the updates on the Indigo Crash Support Group. What started off as a grief support group, where people would post pictures of the people they’d lost, transformed into a channel for everyone’s anger to hold the airlines accountable and then get them to eventually pay the compensation that the relatives deserved. Relative. That’s what I was. Legal spouse, they say.
For however little time I might have been.
‘Are you going to cash the cheque?’ he asks.
The cheque still sits on the table, the cheque that Naman’s calling for because he was, apparently,family.
‘It will end if I do,’ I say. ‘What will I do if this ends?’
‘Live?’
‘Oh please! As if you’re living.’
Before he can defend himself with something silly, my phone lights up. Naman’s texting now.
‘What’s he saying?’ asks Raghav.
‘Behen ki laudi...’ I say. ‘The usual. Should I call him?’
‘No.’
‘I think I should.’
‘You will do it as a joke,’ he says, ‘and then get stressed yourself.’ Then in a voice that’s more growl than words, he adds, ‘Don’t.’
But I like bothering Raghav. It gives me something to do, so I call Naman, and he picks up on the first ring. Obviously. He’s a money-hungry asshole.
‘Hi, Naman.’
I put him on loudspeaker and put on my most nonchalant voice because I know it pisses him off. And then, I brace myself for the stream of expletives that are sure to come.
