When Only Love Remains (17 page)

It’s been eighteen days and Avanti hasn’t stopped crying.

‘You should go home,’ Avanti’s father tells her. ‘I will stay here for the night.’

It has been eighteen days since the first anniversary of their relationship and Devrat is yet to wake up from his sleep and wish Avanti. Eighteen nights ago, Devrat’s cab was rammed into by a truck moving at a high speed. The driver died on the spot and Devrat’s body had to be fetched out from the mangled remains of the car using flame-cutters. His rib cage was shattered, the bones on his right leg were crushed to smithereens and he had multiple fractures in both his arms. The surgery took more than seventy-two hours and a team of doctors working in tandem to save Devrat’s, Avanti’s puppy’s, life. And though he was bandaged and stitched up, he still wasn’t awake. Excessive head trauma had sent him into a coma and he’s yet to wake up from it. His mind and his body are numb. He’s unconscious and he can’t feel anything. The doctors haven’t told them conclusively about when, if at all, he will wake up, if at all.

She has spent the morning talking to Devrat and he’s yet to answer her. ‘I have been counting days, Devrat. And I’m angry with you. We are still to celebrate our year end and you’re sleeping,’ says a crying Avanti. ‘I don’t know what I did wrong but you need to wake up and listen to me. It’s been eighteen days today and I haven’t left the hospital yet because I know you will wake up soon and I want to slap you when you do so. Probably I will kiss you before I slap you, but I will slap you, and you’re not getting away with this. Why are you doing this to me, Devrat? Please wake up!’ She slumps on the bed Devrat’s on, heavily bandaged. ‘Please don’t do this to me, puppy. I love you, please wake up. You have no idea how I have spent these eighteen days. I’m sorry for whatever I might have done wrong, but please forgive me and come back. I got your anniversary card, and also the flowers, but I need to give you my gift as well. You sleeping like this just isn’t fair. You not answering is not fair. How can you do this, Devrat? I don’t know what I would do without you. Your fans, even the ones in Dehradun, are angry that you’re doing this. Please drop the act and please wake up, baby. I swear I will be a good girlfriend and always talk about your masculinity loudly and passionately enough for people to believe me. I swear I will be everything you wanted me to be, but please wake up.’ She breaks down in tears and starts to howl when the nurses take her to waiting room.

In the past few days, every time she has seen him, he seemed to be teasing her, smiling in his sleep. Who knows what he’s dreaming about? Maybe he’s singing songs, or maybe writing long letters to other girlfriends, or enjoying the attention at the bar he’s performing—all the things that make Avanti envious. All she wants is to shake Devrat up from his sleep, or be with him in his dreams.

She has lost a lot of weight in the past few days; her eyes are bloodshot for she hasn’t slept properly in days. The first day she walked into the hospital, in the tracks she wore for Devrat, she sat crying on a steel bench for the entire time he was in surgery. The doctors had told her and Devrat’s parents that his condition was slightly improving. She has barely moved from that bench in the last eighteen days. She thinks it’s the key to Devrat’s recovery.

‘It’s been almost three weeks,’ says Avanti’s father. ‘You can come here tomorrow morning? I will get you.’

Avanti shakes her head. ‘I can’t go home.’

‘Yes, shona, you can go home. We will wait here,’ Devrat’s mother tells her. ‘Go and sleep and come here fresh tomorrow morning.’

‘She’s right. Don’t worry. If anything happens, we will call you,’ Devrat’s father says.

‘NO! NO! NO! Stop saying that! Why don’t you get it?’ howls Avanti. ‘I can’t move from here. The doctor told us that his health was improving and I was sitting RIGHT HERE! I CAN’T MOVE FROM HERE!’ She’s crying and bawling and the others in the waiting room look at her. A few nurses come to tell her to be a little quieter. Devrat’s father tells the nurse that he will take care of her.

‘I can’t go, I can’t go,’ a sobbing Avanti mumbles into her father’s shirt.

‘You don’t have to go,’ says her father and wipes the tears and running nose with his shirt, just like he used to when she was a little child.

Devrat’s parents are sitting on the bench facing Avanti. Devrat’s mother is holding Avanti’s hand and is trying not to break down. Avanti has spent most of the time with Devrat’s mother. They have taken turns crying on each other’s shoulders, while Devrat’s father has maintained a stoic demeanour and have done the running around, along with Avanti’s father. There have been times when Avanti has seen Devrat’s father on his knees, crying, in the dead of the night, in corners of empty corridors, his voice echoing through the still of the night. That’s what fatherhood means; to be a hero, no matter how old you are.

‘It’s cold,’ says Avanti, and her father wraps around a shawl around her. ‘I will stay here.’

Devrat’s mother sits next to Avanti, rubs her hand, and tells her that she can stay if she really wants to be here. Avanti puts her head on Devrat’s mother’s shoulder and both of them start sobbing softly. Both the fathers leave to check with the doctors.

An hour later, Devrat’s mother is sleeping with her head on Avanti’s thigh, and Avanti’s trying hard to recreate the first anniversary in her head. It should have been so different. If only she had not asked Devrat to come to Mumbai a day earlier, this would never have happened. Devrat would never have got into the cab, the car would have never driven into by the truck, and Devrat wouldn’t have been bandaged and lying like a corpse on a hospital bed. It’s because of her that this happened. She’s the guilty one. She should have been on the bed instead of him, she should have been in that accident, and she should have been the one being fed through tubes.

She should have been sleeping. He should have been the one mourning. She would happily switch places with him for the pain is too much to bear.

She sleeps by Devrat’s mother’s side. Another day passes by, and she still hasn’t heard Devrat talk. Slowly, it’s killing her. Her pity for Devrat is turning to anger and irritation. What does he have to lose? He’s sleeping like a child, like he always does, unmindful of what he’s making others around him go through. It’s like he’s back to the old Devrat again. The closed, pain-in-the-ass Devrat. Why doesn’t he hear his father’s cries? Why doesn’t he see that his mother is dying every day? Why can’t he see what he’s making Avanti go through? Why can’t he man up and just get up? What would it take for him to do that?

There are times through the day when Avanti breaks down in tears and starts shouting at Devrat’s door, and it takes quite a few nurses to restrain her and calm her down. In protest, Avanti mutters that she wouldn’t leave the hospital till Devrat wakes up.

And Devrat doesn’t wake up for the next sixty-two days.

Devrat has shrivelled up in the past twelve weeks that he has been lying in a comatose stage. He has lost over ten kilos. And with him, Avanti has shrivelled. She’s a shadow of her earlier self. Though the elders have tried to make her eat, she has become hard to talk to. She’s always on the edge, always a little angry, always a little suicidal, always on the verge of tears. Sometimes, she collects herself and acts mature and at others she’s howling in the middle of the night.

She has always been an overtly optimistic girl, but nothing about Devrat’s condition is optimistic. The frequent checks of the doctors have lessened to a trickle and there’s nothing modern medicine can do for Devrat. It’s an unending wait for him to wake up. She has spent days talking to Devrat, telling him how much everyone misses him, hoping that somewhere deep inside he’s listening. ‘I know you’re in there somewhere, Devrat. And this trick of yours is really sad. I’m closing my eyes now and the next time I open them, I should see you awake and singing my best song to me. Be the boyfriend this girl needs, not the boyfriend this girl deserves. I know, I know it’s a bad rip off of Batman’s line, but it’s the best I can come up with.’

The crying has now lessened a little, but the hurt hasn’t. Instead of a piercing sadness, there’s a sense of gloom that has descended over Avanti and Devrat’s parents that seems to have changed their DNA. Now it’s like they have never been happy. Their faces, their bodies, their hearts, and their spirits have weathered, and they are broken now.

Avanti spends entire days Googling about people who have been in a coma and she knows people have woken up after years. So there’s hope, but the wait is slowly draining Avanti of all her strength. It doesn’t help to see Devrat treated a like a corpse by the nurses and the doctors. One cursory look, one tick on their papers and they move on; to them Devrat is just a few lines on the monitor of the ventilator.

‘He’s IN THERE!’ she had shouted at a nurse who was trying to flip Devrat on his side. It’s done to avoid bed sores but the nurses do it with a disgusted look on their faces and Avanti can’t stand it. ‘JUST GO! I WILL DO IT! DARE YOU TOUCH HIM WITH THAT SMUG FACE.’ Avanti had taken care of Devrat since that day. She doesn’t let anyone touch Devrat now. Be it cleaning his sores or massaging him, she’s clear that only she or Devrat’s mother will do it.

More days pass by. The wait for Devrat to wake up has been endless and unfruitful. Hope has been replaced by a fearful wait. Devrat’s condition has been more or less the same in the past three months and eighteen days. Avanti is yet to go home, and even though the doctors have tried to convince her to go home, she’s not giving in. She hasn’t walked out of the hospital since she came in. Her father has been talking to psychiatrists and other doctors to see if there’s anything wrong with her, if the trauma of seeing Devrat slowly die has affected her mental balance. The doctors have talked to her but have found nothing wrong. What could have they found anyway? What would they have diagnosed? That Avanti’s in love? Where’s the explanation to that? To everyone else, the notion of her sitting there, the girl on that steel bench, counting hours, is stupid. She just knew Devrat for 365 days. And it’s been ninety-eight days already that she has been away from him, that he has been sleeping, oblivious to the pain he’s causing the ones who are waiting outside.

Today, Karishma and Sumit are in the hospital, and they are sitting next to Devrat’s bed. Karishma has been crying for the past hour that she’s here. Sumit’s trying to maintain a brave front.

‘You haven’t left the hospital since the time he got admitted?’ Sumit asks.

‘No,’ answers Avanti. ‘I can’t leave him like this.’

‘What do the doctors say?’ Sumit asks Avanti.

‘They have asked us to wait.’

‘Is he in pain?’ asks Karishma. Her nose runs, and Avanti passes a tissue box to her.

‘No, he can’t feel a thing,’ answers Avanti.

‘This is typical, Devrat.’ Sumit’s eyes have welled up. ‘He puts everyone’s life on hold. Every fucking time, this bastard does this.’ Tears streak down Sumit’s face. ‘Keeping us in a limbo, making us wait between hope and sadness, torturing us, making us miss him. Such an asshole.’ Sumit breaks down completely. ‘Excuse me.’ Sumit leaves the room.

‘Typical Devrat,’ mutters Avanti in her breath and thinks how true it is. ‘Sumit is right, Karishma. Remember the time between his first song and the next?’

Karishma shakes her head.

‘Fifty-three days.’

Karishma and Sumit spend another couple of hours by Devrat’s side. They are going back by that night’s flight.

‘We have something for you,’ says Sumit. And a couple of ward boys come to the room with Devrat’s old guitar, the first one he had ever used in a performance. ‘This is—’

‘I know,’ says Avanti. ‘This is the first guitar Devrat ever used in a live performance. It was a college in Siliguri, wasn’t it?’

Sumit nods. ‘It was his first performance. They just paid for his travel and lodging. I went with him and the video you must have seen on his page? I captured it,’ says Sumit with pride.

‘Thank you,’ says Avanti. ‘Because that video was one of the million reasons I fell in love with him.’

‘I remember how nervous he was before the event. He kept calling me and asking me to pray for him,’ adds Karishma.

‘He looked so nervous when he went up on the stage,’ recalls Avanti. ‘He almost stumbled and fell over. No one in the crowd knew who he was and they had started booing him. I could see him sweat. He was SCARED! But then he started to play and the girls started cheering him on. I cried the first time I saw the video.’

‘Why did you cry?’ asks Karishma.

‘He looked so cute and lost on that stage, like a lost puppy,’ says Avanti fondly.

Sumit points towards the watch. It’s time for them to go. Karishma takes Avanti’s hand into hers and tells her, ‘Devrat really loves you.’ Sumit nods.

‘I know that. He’s my puppy. He can’t do without me. I know he’s going to wake up. It’s just a long nap.’

Sumit and Karishma ask Avanti to be strong and hang in there. Karishma kisses Devrat on his cheek and Sumit shakes Devrat’s limp hand. Though they are smiling, the sadness in the room is overwhelming. All three of them are thinking about it but no one says it aloud. More than a best of luck wish, the kiss and the hand shake is a last good bye.

They leave the hospital, not with hope, but with the feeling that they might have seen the last of Devrat, their friend, the prodigy, the puppy.

Avanti sees them off at the gate of the building and comes back to Devrat’s room. She takes the guitar out of its box and keeps it on her lap. Who says he’s dying? She touches the fret board and she feels a certain electricity grip her, the same kind that gripped her every time Devrat touched her.

She sits near Devrat and takes his hand into hers, ‘You’re still alive, and I know you’re listening. So listen to this, I’m going to wait till you wake up and tell me that you love me.’