‘For past few hours, we were seeing the signs of improvement in her, but all of a sudden her blood pressure fell down drastically. The impact was so much that it led to her heart collapse,’ said the doctors.
The family wanted to see her.
The doctors said they couldn’t hand over the body to the family.
(Did you notice? Yes, body. That’s what they said. She no longer had a name. She was just a body. A dead body.)
It was an accident and the police had to be involved, there were legal formalities to be taken care of alter which her body was to be taken for the postmortem. The family
pleaded with them to spare her from the autopsy, but the authorities drove her to a place where the rest of her mortal remains were torn apart.
Far away from all that was happening, I was still in a state of shock. The truth was so hard to accept. I don’t know what happened later, but I could imagine what was
happening at her place … I heard those cries of pain around me. I saw her fingers, and I clutched at her ring in my right pocket. I saw her being swathed in white and I grabbed her Colourful sari close to my heart. Something within me was going numb, realizing that I could not be there during her last moments.
Moments later, I could feel that something innocent was being burnt. I didn’t even get a chance to kiss her dead hand …
A dead silence persisted in my house. Unlike me, my parents cried in private, for they had to strengthen me. They didn’t even get to see the girl their son wanted to marry.
In the evening, Dad booked the tickets and the next day, both of us left for Faridabad. A day later, in the afternoon, I opened the door to their house. Amidst everyone (I didn’t know them all), I noticed her mom and I rushed to hug her, before we both burst into tears.
The irony of it … The home, which was going to sparkle in celebration of their daughter’s engagement, had such a different atmosphere now. People in dull clothes sat on a giant mattress on the floor of the vacant drawing room. There were whispers and there were sudden cries. And there were those eyes in which the tears had dried up. A curse had
fallen upon us all.
Amid the ordeal of surviving without her, at her home, the very place where she was brought up and nurtured, my day passed somehow. Evening approached. More distant relatives, more acquaintances had arrived. And this led to more cries and more tears. Seeing all this, I wanted to run away to some place where I could be alone with just her memories for company … to room 301 maybe …
Everything was so unbelievable. Yet, it was real.
It got dark at about eight. I was at a photo-studio getting a picture of my dead girlfriend framed, to keep in the gurudwara during the last prayer for her, scheduled for the next day. Guess which picture...?
It was one of those, which she stayed awake till dawn to send me, when I was in my US office. Never in my worst nightmare could I have thought that someday I’d be using her picture for this purpose.
When the shopkeeper handed me the frame, I happened to look into her eyes in that picture. They were beautiful.
Seconds later, I felt Ami di’s fingers wiping my wet eyelashes. We paid and left for home. The next day, we all assembled in the gurudwara. A last prayer for the peace of her
departed soul. The moment I entered, my gaze fell upon her photograph which was now decked with flowers. No one on earth would want to see his girlfriend’s picture decked with flowers. It just kills you. And it’s so hard to face this truth again and again and, yet, restrain yourself in front of everybody.
She still appeared so beautiful.
Everyone gathered there was dressed in white. A few people were praying. When I passed by the row of ladies, I heard a few murmurs, ‘This is the guy who was going to marry her.’
I heard but I ignored them and made my way to the extreme corner, away from my dad, her dad, her family and God.
I don’t remember what happened and for how long I was there. I was with her in my memories. And, subconsciously, I was following the actions of the others. When they stood up, I stood up. When they bowed, I bowed. In a few hours, I think, it was all over … except for the pain in my aching heart.
Back at her home that afternoon, the family which was to host a dinner celebrating the engagement was now hosting her funeral lunch. The cooks who had been booked to
prepare a lavish cuisine were now preparing something else. The people who got
engagement invitations a few days ago were now gathered for such a different reason. And where was I ...?
Serving lunch to the people who didn’t even know me.
In the corner of that room, I saw my own fate mocking me.
The day ended and the night arrived again. And while I wished that her soul may rest in peace, my own soul was restless within. I was trying to sleep, but sleep was far from me. Images from the time I had spent with her kept running through my mind for a long time. That’s the last thing I remember. I don’t know when that far away sleep came near and embraced me.
‘Hey! He is back!’
‘Oooooooohhh! Come on, everybody. Ravin’s back after his engagement.’
Two days later, I was back in my office. Apart from one or two people, no one was aware how reality had drastically changed for me, how things were so different from what
everyone assumed.
And, unaware, my 'friends and colleagues rushed to me the moment they saw me coming out of the elevator on our floor. In no time, before I could say anything, I found myself enclosed in an irregular circle of people. They were shouting, singing and demanding a treat from me.
I stood silently.
Someone shouted, ‘Hey, show us your ring.’ Someone else in the crowd pulled at my right hand, looking for it.
I still stood silently.
But the entire floor kept looking at the gathering around me. From far away, a few folks shouted, ‘Congrats! Buddy.’
‘Where is the ring? Did you forget it in the shower? Or have you dumped it in some bank’s locker?’
‘Hahahaha!’
‘Hey, come on. Speak up.’
‘If she gets to know that you aren’t wearing her ring, isn’t she gonna shout at you?’ someone joked.
And I looked up to face them all. Some of them noticed my damp eyes and they stopped their jokes.
‘She will never shout at me,’ I said softly to the people in front of me. A few heard, a few did not.
‘Why not? Have you started scaring her?’ asked a voice from behind me. ‘Hahahaha!’ I turned and faced everybody. My eyes told them my misery. And I just managed to say, ‘Because she is no more.’
She died. I survived.
Because I survived, I died every day.
I was bound by my stars to live a lonely life. Without her, I felt so alone. Though the fact is that it’s just she who is gone and everything else is the same. But this ‘everything else’ is nothing to me …
I miss her in my days. I miss her in my nights. I miss her every moment of my life. And I’ll tell you what this loneliness feels like what it feels like to live a life without the person you loved more than anything or anyone else in the world:
Recalling something about her, you happen to laugh and in no time, sometimes even as you laugh, you taste your own tears.
The more you want to avoid romance around you, the more you will find it. It will torture you. You will see couples kissing and hugging each other, resting their heads on each other’s shoulders. You will see them everywhere, even in the movie halls where you’ll want to spend a few hours in darkness. You will find a pair sitting next to you, doing all that you, sometime in the past, did with your beloved. You will feel pain, your heart will bleed. And, very calmly, you will walk on pretending you didn’t see anything.
Your 'friends will talk about yet another hot chick. But all the good-looking girls on this planet will fail to attract you. Nothing excites you, even your sexual desires go into
hibernation. While working out in the gym, you will try to lift the heaviest weights. Later, standing under the shower, you will cry hard but nobody will hear you. The splashing of the shower will mask the sounds of your sobbing.
And, believe me, your life will appear worse than death.
Everything that brought a smile to my face had now started torturing me. Even the
Shaadi.com ads on the Internet added to my agony. I remember how she used to tell me that, alter our marriage, we would put a success story on the website. I never knew I would be writing a tragedy.
At times, I felt like a drug addict who badly needs his next hit. But at least an addict has his drugs … I felt suffocated. As if something was stopping my breath. As if something was choking my soul.
I got scared of things. I don’t know what they were, but they wouldn’t let me sleep. And, like a kid, I’d rush to my mom, to sleep beside her. She would pat my forehead. Still, for hours, I would stare at the fan rotating above me.
If ever I fell asleep, I would wake to nightmares, screaming. The time was always 4 a.m.
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