N A N D I N I
"Rough night?"
My eyes flickered from the instant-coffee machine to the lady at the hospital's reception only for a second, and I wondered what gave it away– if it was the messy hair, raspy voice, tired eyes or the bags underneath it.
Drawing a small smile on my face nonetheless, I nod. "That's quite an understatement."
"You have family in here?" She asked and I almost felt like laughing. Little did she know, I had no family left.
"Friends," I correct her.
"Hope they get well soon," her gaze fell onto the now-full cup in my hand and I wondered if she noticed from the colour of my dark coffee how it contains no sugar. I have never been very fond of coffee anyway, but you gotta do what have to do to keep awake, even if it meant drinking something as bitter as what I hold in my hands now.
"I hope they get well soon too." I mutter, returning her smile as a quick, polite gesture, before walking away.
I was in a complete different country altogether, but the hospital still gave me an eerie vibe. I couldn't look at the reception or the rooms around me without feeling an odd suffocation. I don't know if it was because of the sleepiness, but everytime that I shut my eyes, even if only for a mere minute, I could picture Amms on her death bed. And worst, sometimes I was brought back to Abhi and his last words to me.
Desperate to take some fresh air, I walk out of the hospital. Despite spending an hour lurking around while Manik inquired the status from the doctors, the sky overhead was still dark. We were an hour away from sunrise, and yet, the clouds covered the sky like thick smoke, leaving no space for stars, unlike the beautiful evening it had been.
The rain had stopped, although it still thundered and occasionally, lightning danced across the void, making me flinch. It was still drizzling, but I hardly cared about getting drenched in the water as I leaned back on my boyfriend's car, holding the hot cup of coffee secure between both my palms. It almost caused a burning sensation through my skin, but I didn't mind. It seemed the physical pain was the only thing keeping me sane. All the emotional pain didn't really matter anymore. I felt empty from the inside.
I kept staring up at the sky, without blinking. Everytime my eyes filled with water and the tears threatened to fall, I pushed them away, as if it was a small game I had created since the past some time to see how long I can last without the overwhelming feeling of breaking down right where I was standing.
So far, I was doing good.
"They're fine," I heard Manik's voice, making me snap out of my reverie.
I turn my head towards my right, and from the corner of my eyes, watch him walk in my direction, and then lean on the car beside me.
"They're fine," he repeats, and I wondered whom he was trying to reassure- me or himself.
"Then why won't they dispatch them? Or atleast let us see them?" It wasn't until I had spoken out loud that I realised how miserably tired and desperate I sounded.
There was panic in my voice. Hell, there was panic in my veins.
"It's a rule," he sighs, rubbing his palms on his face, "The doctors have to be sure they are okay before letting them go. None of them were injured except for some basic bruises. It was a landslide because of the rains. There were quite a lot of casualties, but they got lucky."
But they got lucky. These words were calming in am unexplainable way, maybe because I knew somebody who didn't get as lucky as them. Not everyone survives such accidents.
I breathe in relief, "What now? How long do we have to just wait before they dispatch our friends?"
"I can take you home," he offers, "If you'd like to rest for a while? You look terrible."
I pull a teasing smile on my face. "I look terrible? You sure do know how to wipe a girl right off her feet by your charms, Malhotra."
He chuckled under his breath. "You know that's not what I meant. You look terrible in a hospital-hating, giving-you-nightmares kinda way. If you want me to talk about you appear, then that messy hair and dropping eyes don't make you any less gorgeous, love."
"Ever-so flattering, aren't you?" I roll my eyes.
"Just proving that I absolutely know how to charm a girl right off her feet," he playfully said.
I chuckled.
"They let me have a peak," he said, after a brief moment of silence. "Zubin is in the medical ward because he was also running a temperature. He's sleeping now, and the doctors won't dispatch him until tomorrow afternoon. Aliya was on the bed beside him. Just a cut on her arm. Awake and making a fuss about losing her phone to a stranger."
So typically Aliya, to care about her phone more than her life. The ghost of a smile lingered on my lips. "What about Cabir and Navya?"
"Cabir is absolutely okay," He promises. "About Navya..."
I don't let him complete. "What happened to her?"
"She's okay," he looks at me pointedly for the way I cut him off in panic. "She had just passed out. So the doctors were doing some additional tests to make sure that everything is okay."
"But you said she was okay." I say, and notice how annoyed I sound.
"She will be," he promises. "And this was an hour ago. They should be out anytime soon now."
I nod to myself, and look away at the empty parking lot of the hospital. There were a few other cars parked, but we were the only ones there. The hospital was at the end of the cliff, and I stared at the city below. It was almost hard to believe that this was the same city we overlooked from the Ferris Wheel at the carnival a few hours ago, so vibrant as if it had a life of its own. And now, it was dark and dull because unlike us, the city was asleep.
"I'm sorry," I say, after some silence. "For snapping at you. I didn't mean to."
"It's alright," he replied, "We've lost people. Too many friends. You're scared. It's okay."
"As have you," I look at him.
"What?"
"Lost people," I add. "I'm not the only one who's lost people I loved. You lost them too."
He nods, and then remains silent before saying something that surprises me. "I... I believe I owe you an apology."
"Why?" I look at him, my eyebrows knit in confusion.
"There's this thing in the back of my head since a long time now," he scratches the back of his head like he does when he is nervous. "After we met, you've apologised to me and every time, you took the blame on yourself and I let you. I told you that I forgive you but I never told you that I am sorry too."
"Sorry for what? You don't have anything to apologise f-"
"For not being able to stop you. More like, for not even trying enough to stop you," he confessed.
"Manik," I instantly say. "That not your-"
"Let me, please," he cuts me off, again. "For days now, I've been trying to come up with an explanation to give you... of why I didn't try harder to stop you, or why I just let you go, or why I couldn't hold your hand and tell you how much I wanted you to stay. Truth being said, I don't know. I don't know what was going on in my head on that night. I don't know remember why I just let you go. All I know is I should have come to Mangalore and spoken to you instead of accepting your goodbye and letting you go."
Before I could say anything, he went on. "I'm not looking for forgiveness, Nandini. I've made peace with my mistakes years ago. But I just want you to know that everytime you ask yourself 'what if I had stayed?', I ask myself 'what if I had asked her to stay?'. And yet, I let you blame yourself time and again. So here it is. I am equally to blame. And I have been more sorry over years than words can explain."
When he doesn't say anything else, I speak up. "I don't blame you, Manik. At all. I want you to know this. And even if you're not looking for forgiveness, I forgive you. If you can look past my mistakes than I can do the same for you."
A small smile lingers on his face as we lock eyes for only a moment, and a weak murmur escapes his lips. "Thank you."
I nod back.
As the wind gusted around us acutely, the rustling of leaves was the only sound in the pitch silence of the dawn. The clouds were clearing overhead as morning began to approach.
Ever since I was a kid, I loved this time of the night... when it wasn't perfectly dark, but the sun hadn't risen either. The sky would just be painted into one of the shades of blue. There would be some light in the blackness of the night but even the stars would still linger. Twilight. The period when even the darkest nights would recede to give way to the first rays of sunlight, and it would always warm my heart to see the stars at one end, and silvered strokes of the emerging sun at another.
"It's intoxicating, isn't it?" He whispered, as if reading my mind.
"It is," I deeply inhale, breathing into the raw scent of mud that usually lingers in the air after it rains.
His left hand finds its way to my right palm, tracing it down until he entwines his sleek fingers into my weird ones, and oddly enough, my hand fits in perfectly into his, as if someone had especially carved our fingers only to be held by one another on a dark night like this one, when the sky was twisting colours as if it were drunk on the magic in the air and the stars would disappear and reappear as if they were playing their own little game of hide and seek with us.
I lay my head on his shoulder and I feel him relax beside me. It made me a little scared to know in that moment that chaos could run around me in the form of wildfires and I would somehow still find my calm as long as his hand was in mine, and it scared me more to know how I didn't mind that all.
"What are you thinking about?" He cuts my thoughts short. Little did he know, the way his fingers were drawing doodles on my palm made it very difficult to focus on a single thought. His touch was my very distraction.
"About how grateful I am to be here. With you. Alive," I reply. "Not everyone gets a second chance; I feel blessed that we did."
He clicks his tongue. "That, I can agree to. Never thought I'd be able to hold your hand under a sky full of stars again. Takes me back to those evenings in the balcony of our apartment."
A sad smile escaped my lips. "What are you thinking about?"
"Death," he replied, and a shiver ran down my spine.
I was just one breath away from being horrified. "What?"
"I mean," he chuckled, "I'm thinking about how many times we've stood outside similar hospitals after saying goodbye to people we loved so much. How many times we've told ourselves not to hope in such situations, because they end in death and depression. And despite that, despite how much it hurt at those times, when we entered today, it didn't stop us from hoping that everything would be okay and this wouldn't be another tragedy to cry about. After everything we've gone through, the hope in our heart still won over the fear of being crushed by death."
"You know," I say, "When I was taking therapy under Zubin, he once told me, if you love someone, you will always lose them; it could be by a sudden accident one day or on a deathbed when they're eighty. Every story ends in death. And it always hurts, whether you've loved someone for one day or for one lifetime. It'll always pain. You just have to chose to love the people who are worth that pain in the end."
A small smile appeared on his lips, as if those words were all too familiar to him. "True they say, grief is the price we pay for love."
"Reminds me of how Hades fell in love with Persephone," I smile.
"What?" He laughs in confusion.
"You don't know this?" I look at him with amused eyes when he nodded negatively. One would assume that this man in front of me, such a lover of literature and words, would know one of the most talked about stories of all times.
"So... Hades was the God of Death, who fell in love with Persephone, a beautiful nymph full of zest and love, the daughter of the Goddess of Life," I tell him.
"Ah!" He clicks his tongue. "Must have been a tragic love story."
My grin widened. "On the contrary, it was one of the most beautiful tales ever told."
"I don't understand?" His eyebrows knit, "A love so divergent should breed nothing but chaos."
"And maybe it did," I shrug, "But she could grow flowers and scatter sunshine in the darkest parts of his heart, and his very existence was the darkness that her light could shine in. As long as they were in love and standing together, why would they care about all the chaos in the world around them?"
He looked amused, but not convinced.
"Think about it," I nudge him playfully, "If the Sun and the Moon can be lovers, then why can't the daughter of life and god of death be too?"
"I think such stories sound beautiful only in theory," he replies after a moment.
"Wouldn't you want a story like that?" I counteract.
"A story where we go against the laws of nature and fight everyone in this world to be with each other? Sure," he replied. "But a story full of contradictions that ends in death for people to call a beautiful tragedy? Not really."
I just stare at him. His gaze on me was intense, as were his words. "I told you Nandini, that if I was the Sun and you my Moon, I would want that eclipse to actually last forever without caring about the consequences that the world has to face. If I was Hades and you were to be my Persephone, I would lock you up in the castle of death with me and let the rest of the world breed in chaos. I am very selfish that way."
A smile threatens to break away but I purse my lips together. "What do you want then?"
"I–" he stopped. An unfathomable emotion flickers in his eyes as he runs his fingers through his hair. "Fuck what I want."
I knit my eyebrows.
His voice was quieter this time, his eyes still fixed at mine. "What do you want?"
I don't hesitate to speak the first words on the top of my head. "You," I whisper, "I'd always only want you."
It was beautiful, the way a smile broke out on his lips, and although small, it reached his eyes, which shone brighter than the disappearing stars in the twilight over our head. I don't hold back the smile on my face too. I had always been oddly fascinated as a teenager by the way two lovers look at each other with smiling faces as if they held the love of the universe in their eyes, and when I couldn't tear the smile away from my face or my eyes from him, I knew this was me living the love that I didn't even dream of having. My own little fairytale.
Suddenly, the still silence of the new morning was broken by echoes of footsteps and both our eyes divert towards the entrance of the hospital, from where three very familiar silhouettes walked towards us.
Looking at them broke our little bubble we had just created. Aliya looked worn out, having a bandaid on her left arm, while Cabir had some black towards his left forehead. Navya was thankfully bruise-free.
A smile of relief spread through my face as I rushed towards them into Cabir's arms first, and then enveloped Navya and Aliya into the same hug.
"Aa jaa," Cabir called Manik. "Group hug."
Manik scoffed. "It's cringy."
"You know you want to," Navya shouted in a muffled manner, being sandwiched in the centre of the hug.
Aliya's laughs echoed as Manik gave in and laughingly put his arms around all of us.
I didn't remember the last time we did this. Maybe six years ago, at my and Manik's apartment, when our friends visited for the first time, after Harshad tried to molest me in that club. Before the Mangalore roadtrip.
And my heart hurt to know that there were people in that hug that weren't here today- Abhi, Mukti, and Aryamman; and yet, it was oddly comforting to be squeezed by them until I was out of breath, giving me hope that the next time we have this hug again, atleast one of the three missing people could be here with us. At least.
"Thank God y'all are okay," I murmur when we all break apart.
"We are," Aliya agreed, and suddenly, all the tiredness from her eyes had vanished. "Although the doctors insist they wouldn't leave Zubin until tomorrow afternoon because of his fever."
"But he's okay, right?" I ask, only to reassure myself.
"He is," she presses her eyes in reassurance.
"What about the Milan trip though?" Navya asked. "We have to leave tomorrow and they wouldn't dispatch Zubin until afternoon."
"We'll figure out a way," Manik blows out some air from his mouth. "Worst case scenario, we leave early and he joins. Or we just postpone the trip by a day. I'll work it out."
I very well knew the second option was not possible. Aryamman was to reach Milan tomorrow night, as was the other model, which meant he was already on his flight to Milan. We couldn't postpone the shoots now.
"It's morning," Navya noticed, and my eyes wander back to sky, which was a little more lit now, rays of sunlight canvassing through the sky, adding strokes of faint yellow between the blue.
"Almost morning," Cabir corrected her, a smug smile on his face. I knew I was not the only person to notice his smile, because all of us looked at him expectantly, as if waiting for him to explain. He opens his mouth briefly and then shuts it again, as if trying to make up his mind. Finally, he speaks. "Let me take y'all somewhere."
"The only place we will be going to is my house," Manik firmly replied, "To sleep."
"Nope," Cabir pops the p.
Manik cocks his eyebrow. "Did you just say no to sleep?"
"Yes," he grins, "We have to go somewhere."
Manik rolls his eyes. "This is the first time you're in this city, remember? I have to drive you. So better tell me where you want to go."
"I will instruct you," he somehow just couldn't stop smiling, making me wonder what the hell was he upto. The last time I saw him smile this way, Manik got soaked in confetti and glitter by Aliya in a prank planned for him.
As we got into the car with Cabir still smiling like an idiot, one thing was for sure: either this was too good, or this was not good at all. There was no in-between.
✿
Daylight had spread around us by the time we reached to Cabir's designated place, an Indian Chai stall at the bottom of the cliff, on the way back home. Well, this was London, so even the tea stall was as good as a small café in India.
As we girls stood outside the car, me actually sitting on the car's bonnet, Aliya leaning beside me and Navya standing opposite us, I found it hard to believe that Cabir was so excited to drink Indian tea. But again, always expect the unexpected from him.
"He really just wanted to drink tea?" Aliya, too, was finding it hard to believe that Cabir just sacrificed his precious sleep for this.
Navya just sighed in return. "When do I ever know what he's upto?"
I chuckle. Poor girl.
Just on queue, both the boys returned with five cups of tea balanced in their four hands, and handed us one of ours, keeping theirs to themselves.
Not caring about how hot it would be, I blow on the surface and take a sip. It was painfully hot and not quite like the roadside tea back in India, but it came close. Despite it almost burning my tongue, tea felt like bliss after having to drink the bitter strong black coffee at the hospital.
I found Cabir's eyes glued to my changing expressions. When our eyes met, he chuckled. "Hold on, sweetheart."
My cheeks flushed a deep shade of red as I put the cup down again, smiling sheepishly.
Cabir went on. "Five, almost six, years ago we were at Mangalore. At the terrace of Nandini's house. We held similar plastic cups in our hand, but instead of tea, we had champagne in it. We watched the fireworks and made a toast."
He had barely even started but the mere mention of the day made me feel nostalgic in a soul-wrenching way. I could feel the heaviness in my throat.
"Not all of us are here," he cleared his throat. "As much as I wish it was not true, truth being said, we lost a lot. We lost friends. We lost family. We lost a part of ourselves. But I'm not here to talk about what we lost. The accident made me realise about how much we still have left. So I would like to make a toast again, like we did on that day, to what we have today."
I pull a smile on my face again. Cabir puts his hand around Aliya. Navya leans in towards me and we exchange smiles.
"Then you go first," Manik raised his plastic cup in the air.
A wider smile spreads through Cabir's lips. "Before making the toast, I have an announcement."
"Go ahead," Aliya impatiently tapped his stomach. "Don't make us wait."
"When Navya was unconscious and the doctors did some additional tests," he looked at Navya intently, "He told me that she is pregnant."
The smile vanished from all our faces, and I gasped in surprise, increasing my hold on Navya. My eyes flicker from her face to her stomach and then back to her face.
She shuts her eyes tight, a smile on her lips that reaches her eyes. "I've known for a few days now," she murmurs sheepishly, "But we were leaving for London, so I thought I'll tell you here."
I squeezed her into a hug. "Congratulations," I couldn't stop smiling, as could no one else. Manik hugged Cabir and Aliya hugged Navya from the other side.
She made her way to her would be husband, and Cabir leaned down to leave a gentle kiss on her lips. "Thank you," he whispered to her, and I could see tears glistening in his eyes.
"I'm so happy for you," Aliya shrieked, almost clapping her hands together. "I always fucking knew that out of all of us, you would be the first to have a family!"
Cabir held Navya close to him as he raised the cup to a height. "To my would-be wife, and child."
Navya's eyes flickered to all of us. "To getting back an old family and starting a new one."
Being the third in line, Aliya raises her cup as well. "To new beginnings."
When I wondered what I should say in my toast, there was only one word that came in my mind. "To Mukti," I said, gently, "And to wishing she's happy wherever she is."
Everyone exchanged glances, as if a quiet acknowledgement for the same.
"To Aryamman," Manik takes a deep breath, his eyes wandering to all of them before they lock with mine, "And To Us."
I wondered how beautiful it was that our life runs in full circles. Years ago, when we stood together and did a similar toast, Manik's was the last one, and his words were the same: to us. Somethings never change, and quite frankly, they shouldn't.
As his fingers laced mine once again and I securely held his hand in mine, happy smiles adorning all our faces, I also knew that a lot of other things had changed.
We were no more teenagers dancing in the rain. We had grown up and matured into adults who knew that despite all the tragedy, happiness exists too. But we also knew that happiness comes with a cost. To us, it always has.
And yet, we were risking to lose each other, again. The risk of losing ourselves, again. Because despite how many times our hopes have crushed us, it didn't stop us from hoping that in the end, all the pain and grief and tragedy will be worth it.
We were prepared to fight the odds to stay together this time. We were prepared to fight to protect this little world of happiness that we had managed to create once again.
Truth being said, the cost of our happiness has always been quite high. But one thing I was also absolutely sure about was that whatever the price, we would be willing to pay it.
Whatever it takes.
✿ ✿ ✿