‘What’s the use?’
‘Our journeys were shaped by who you became. Don’t insult us by saying you didn’t matter to all of us. To Mumma, to Baba, to Aanchal, to Gaurav, to her parents... look at all that you gave us, Dada. You were the centre of all of our lives. You’re our main event. This place made you.’
‘... could have got Aanchal in return.’
The doctors said she died of a pulmonary embolism. They assured me that she didn’t suffer. They had tried to fight me when I wanted Gauravi to meet her mother—even if she was dead—some random medical risks they talked about.
How still, how calm she was.
As if she had finally stopped running.
The nurses kept begging me to leave the room, to let them do their job. Had they done their job, my wife would have been fucking alive. It was a damned clot. How the fuck can a small piece of coagulated blood destroy everything I held dear? How could an army of doctors not fix it?
Everyone keeps reminding me how selfless an act it was from her. It wasn’t selfless; it was cowardly. To stay with me for a lifetime, that would have required courage. Not to end in a blaze, reduced to a memory.
‘The boat’s here,’ says Rabbani.
We wear our life jackets and board the boat Rabbani had hired for us. Gauravi’s really excited to see the dolphins. We don’t see any. Years from now, she’s probably going to see this memory differently.
I take Gauravi into my arms.
I tell her about Aanchal, her mother. She registers the word ‘Mumma’, but she uses it loosely for any woman. My stories mean nothing to her. She just repeats certain words from them. But it’s my job to tell her Aanchal’s stories before the details muddle in my brain. So I tell her everything. I already find myself adding embellishments, making Aanchal seem part goddess. Which she might not be to others, but she always was to me. She listens, her little head cocked to one side, her brown eyes reflecting the sky above and my heartbreak within.
Rabbani gives me the taped box that’s serving as an urn for Aanchal’s ashes.
The pilot stops the boat. The gentle rocking makes my heart lurch.
‘This is what she would have wanted,’ says Rabbani.
The ashes feel heavier than anything I’ve ever carried. My heart seems like a boulder pressing me down, trying to sink me to the bottom of the sea as I open the box, the finality of the moment hitting me like a sledgehammer.
I let Aanchal go.
I let the ashes flow into the ocean, watching as they get carried away by the waves. Gauravi, not understanding the gravity of the situation, claps in delight, thinking this is a new game. I let her.
‘I love you,’ I whisper, hoping the wind will carry my words to Aanchal.
We sit there, Gauravi, Rabbani and I, and watch the ocean carry a part of us away, a part of us that we’ll never get back. Aanchal, my love, my heart, my everything, is now a part of something vast, boundless, just like the love for us she left behind.
‘Love’s not just about holding on, it’s also about letting go,’ says Rabbani, as she wraps her arm around me and rests her head on my shoulder.
Gauravi wraps her tiny fingers around my thumb. ‘I love you,’ I whisper.
‘You,’ Gauravi repeats.
