Gaurav failed us all. His actions ripped us apart.
To get a handle on my anxiety, I spend the rest of the flight finishing a non-fiction book on mindfulness and re-watching portions from theHarry PotterandAvengersbox set.
As the plane descends into Delhi, my heart pounds. I knew Maa–Papa, Rajat and Vanita would be waiting for me at the airport, but nothing could have prepared me for the rush of emotion that overcame me when I saw them.
My family.
I rush into their open arms, tears streaming down my face, and I feel the weight of all my sadness and confusion slightly lift off my shoulders. It’s as if they absorb it all, leaving me feeling like me again.
But then, as I look at their tired faces, I can see the toll both their children has taken on them. There was me, the unmarried twenty-eight-year-old living in New York, returning home only twice a year, and my troubled brother, who had nearly ended his own life.
I notice how old, how defeated they have become.
It makes me mad. I feel an unjustified anger against them. There are people in their mid-sixties who look like they are in their forties, who have a cheerful way about them, who run, play a sport, join clubs and live life like it’s meant to be lived, who still have vigour and do things young people do. Why couldn’t my parents be like that? Why did they have to become wrinkled, frail, weak and bent, and remind me that they are not going to be there one day? What anchors me to this world if not their presence? No matter how old you are when your parents die, you still become an orphan.
Rajat drives the car while I sit in between Maa and Papa in the back seat. Vanita’s in the passenger seat.
‘You didn’t have to come,’ I tell Rajat and Vanita.
Vanita speaks, ‘We were just getting away from our children.’
‘They are the worst,’ adds Rajat.
I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that they are responsible for raising humans. Weren’t we just kids a few years ago? When I was younger, I couldn’t fathom why thirty-somethings would dress as if they were half their age. It seemed peculiar. But as the years passed, I came to realize that they simply hadn’t yet grasped their own ageing. Not all who age acquire wisdom, and I am certainly no exception. I’m twenty-eight. The number itself is repulsive. Two years from thirty. Double of fourteen. I consider fourteen-year-olds big enough to make their own decisions. And I am now twice that age!
But as strange as ageing is, it has brought good things.
I make my own money, live on my own terms, and I have never felt healthier. Eighteen months ago, Namit insisted I join a gym. He waved his hands and emphatically declared it would change my life. He succeeded. In the last year or so, I have shed my fat, my biceps have peaked, my lateral back muscles have spread and my jawline has sharpened—all things I thought I didn’t care about. If I was earlier a follower of the cult, now I’m a missionary asking others to join the gym. So how can I be most free, most fit and yet feel age closing in on me?
While I have been grappling with my own ageing, Vanita and Rajat’s kids are nearing two years. Both of them have gained weight—even Rajat—during the pregnancy, which they haven’t lost. They don’t even care. They have settled into their new bodies with love. While every morning I take off my T-shirt and turn and analyse my own. A body that I have painstakingly sculpted.
The last time someone touched my body was a year ago. Saket. The man of my dreams, the guy I chose to spend the rest of my life with. But when he touched me, I felt an overwhelming emptiness. My body revolted. My heart ached with a sharp pain.
I don’t get to see Rajat and Vanita that often. It’s not just the distance that’s the problem. Even when I’m in India, they are busy with their children’s playdates, their tantrums, and their hospital visits and the creche pick-ups and drops. I lost both my friends to their children. Even when the stars somehow aligned and we did meet, I happened to like their children more than I liked their parents. And every time I see Rajat with Nandini, and Vanita with Aditya, my own loneliness overwhelms me.
It’s 3 a.m. when we get home. Maa–Papa, who get tired easily these days, go to bed. Having slept on the flight, I’m wide awake. Both Rajat and Vanita offer to stay but I request them to go home. They understand.
As I wander from one room to another, my own home feels alien to me. Between six months ago when I last visited and now, there have been a bunch of changes. The mandir of the room has been expanded. More idols have been added. A new dining table has come in. The doors of the room have been unscrewed in anticipation of Gaurav moving in.
I slump on the sofa, cradling a cup of tea I have made for myself. Dread pools in my stomach at the thought of seeing Gaurav. I open the latest report from the clinic to prepare myself for what’s about to come. As I read, my mind drifts back to the day we moved into this flat. Gaurav was coughing and wheezing as the pandit performed thehavan.
‘How do people even smoke?’ he had wondered.
To think that one day, Maa–Papa and I would have to pick him up from a rehab centre was unimaginable. And yet, here I am, living in the same house, with the doors taken off so thatwhen Gaurav comes here, he can’t hide and snort a few lines of cocaine.
I wonder what would have happened if we had never let him live alone in his bachelor’s pad away from this house, away from us. Or what if Daksh had never stopped managing him, or if Tejal had kept a keener eye on him? I have circled over these countless times. The truth is, it’s entirely Gaurav’s fault.
He made us suffer.
3.
Aanchal Madan
Tejal is in the parking lot twenty minutes before time. I see her park from the balcony. She doesn’t call, doesn’t come up, just stays in the car, just sits and waits there. When the clock strikes 7 a.m., that’s when Maa’s phone rings and Tejal announces that she has reached.
I have never liked Tejal.
Not when I saw her at Vanita’s wedding. Not when Daksh first talked to her in Dubai and set her up with Gaurav. Not when she slept with Gaurav and then held his hand during the wedding as if they had been dating for years. Definitely not when Gaurav brought her to the airport when I was leaving for New York. She had no business being there. My last visual before taking the flight to another country was Maa putting her arm around Tejal as if she were a replacement for me. As if the family was complete again, this time without me.
