No God in Sight (16 page)

KHWAJAS

Twenty minutes later, Minaz is driving us to Colaba. She insists she is perfectly capable, even on a day like this, of maneuvering her Wagon-R through the city’s treacherous
traffic. We’re strapped down in our seats, our faces chilled by the conditioned air blasting from the vents on the dashboard. Her parents assumed I had come to collect their daughter for yet another harmless day out. Minaz is honking too much; she is beeping at anything that moves on the road. I glance at her repeatedly. She once claimed her left profile was more flattering. Right now I doubt she cares what angle I see her from. We are not talking. There is nothing left to say. We are driving past VT toward Fountain. Colaba is ten minutes away. We are not sentimental fools. Neither of us wants to become a parent like this—under duress, with regret. Besides, after this morning, I know how unprepared I am for fatherhood. ‘You brought your license?’ Minaz asks, with an eye on the rearview mirror. ‘Yes,’ I say. I will be driving us back to Agripada from the nursing home. There is an inferno in my underwear; I have only now begun to realize to what extent I had injured my penis. And there is gratitude—a shameful and hopeless gratitude toward Minaz for consenting to the desecration of her body in order to salvage our shining futures.

We reach Colaba and park the car near the post office. Minaz and I start walking toward Pasta Lane. Someone seems to be holding a magnifying glass over the city this afternoon. The sun’s heat has never been this intense, this punishing.

Love is known to strengthen after a single shared event
of intolerable grief—a partner’s infidelity, the demise of a child. I suppose it’s the price people have to pay to remain together. Minaz and I have been together for eight fun-filled, giddy-headed months. After this afternoon, after we have paid our price, I suppose she and I will become inseparable.

‘We’re here,’ she says and starts to enter Shamma Nursing Home. I don’t follow her in. I want to hug her. But I don’t want to offend her.

Minaz comes out to the footpath and gives me her trademark tough stare—the look that has no one fooled.

‘Okay?’ I ask. She snorts.

We step into the dimly lit waiting room. Minaz’s heartbeats are hitting me like sonic booms.

A man is standing with his back to us. He is gazing at the frosted pane of a closed window. There is no one else in here. Distracted by our entry, he turns to look at us.

Is he?

Could this be?

No.

No. Clearly not.

This can’t be the doctor. This man is wearing a striped shirt and black pants. There is nothing remarkable about him—no tortured eyes, no dark circles or blotchy skin, nothing to indicate that he is the doer of the deed that Minaz and I have been agonizing over day and night for the past three weeks. This man looks like a shopkeeper.

I ask, ‘You… you are the doctor?’

I am half-expecting a shorter, fatter, darker, and older individual to sneak out from the adjoining room and announce in a coarse, phlegmatic voice, ‘No, I am the doctor.’

I lose my bearings when the man in the striped shirt nods to indicate that he is, in fact, the doctor. That he is, in fact, the nadir of our lives. That he is, in fact, the abortionist.