‘Arre! Madan ji, long time.’
Amruta interrupts this. ‘Can we have this conversation later? Daksh, I will come in the morning, okay?’
‘No,’ Daksh insists. ‘I will come to you.’
Daksh then looks at the screen for a few seconds. His eyes grow soft and the conversation happens through subtle expression changes. It’s like their own secret language. Like they know what’s there in each other’s hearts without needing to use words.
‘Fine,’ says Amruta. ‘We will wait then.’
Then there’s a long pause.
‘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. Suddenly, and for no reason at all, I am gasping for breath. The words said with the sincerity of a monk, the seriousness of a dying person, are brimming with unexpected love. I find my heart shattering.Why?
I miss you.
The words, though innocuous, 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. He was in love with me, now he wants to see me squirm and be angry, and soon, I will be erased from his consciousness. Written off as an error in judgement before he found his path.
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 softly looking at the screen, the small curve of his lips, I feel a sharp pain piercingmy heart. I remember this look. It used to turn my knees into jelly. It’s how he got me to be in a relationship just hours after I had broken up with Vicky. I feel 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.
14.
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 cannot be taken outside the hospital.
‘No part of him is waste,’ Gaurav says, ‘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.
I watch on as Tejal flutters her eyes at Gaurav and asks if he needs anything. Gaurav shyly declines. The whole conversation is gag-inducing.
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, that phone call, the mayhem of Daksh’s life, squealing kids, screaming kids, loving kids, and the voice of Amruta, that seductive yet adoring tone and those words,I miss you.
Maa–Papa had talked to me on the way rather normally. As if their daughter hadn’t just robbed them of the chance of a grandchild.
‘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.
