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This time because she wanted to be a mother. Only because she wanted to be a mother.
‘And you started trying again?’
‘After three months,’ he replied. Three guilt-ridden months during which the top of her head to the tips of her toes mourned the lost baby.
‘And you conceived again?’ the doctor asked, breaking her line of thought.
‘No, though she did get tubercolosis,’ he said.
God did not want to give a baby to someone as horrible as her, she knew.
‘You have been trying for how long now?’
‘Two years,’ he replied, pursing his lips, his eyes growing hard. Dr Jacob just saw a worried husband. She saw a husband seething with anger at how useless his wife was. ‘Can you do something? Please help us?’ he added.
She looked at her husband and then at the doctor. The last two years had been tough.
Dr Jacob spent the next half an hour studying their file and asking some more questions. ‘There is only one way for you to have a child,’ the doctor said.
Her heart skipped a beat, every cell awake with hope. She was pitifully desperate to have her baby in her arms, a baby to love, a baby to call her own, a baby that would make her forget all she’d gone through.
‘How?’ they both asked, sitting straighter.
‘Adopt,’ the doctor replied. ‘I am terribly sorry and I don’t know how else to say this, but looking at your reports I cannot give you any hope of being able to have your own child,’ he said, shaking his head.
She stared at Dr Jacob and bit her lips hard to stop herself from bursting into tears. She’d had one chance of being a mother and she had blown it.
There was going to be no child.
Her arms would forever remain empty.
Her heart ached, it bled, it sobbed the most pitiful tears.
Outwardly, she showed no emotion, and even managed a smile when bidding goodbye to Dr Jacob.
6
Dusk was about to claim another day. The ancient imli tree stood firm and resolute, watching the little scene unfold under its branches with avuncular interest.
Atharv had first walked past it as a five-year-old in white shorts, accompanied by a little girl in pigtails.
He now stood over six feet tall, almost a man, and the same girl, almost a woman, was walking towards him.
They were best friends, the tree knew. For how else could they always have such fun together as it had witnessed over the years?
Tonight, however, ‘fun’ was far from their minds. Tonight was heavy, felt thick, meant more than either knew.
Atharv stared at Koyal unblinkingly, his heart missing a beat. What would she say, he wondered.
‘Stop staring.’ Koyal laughed, pushing aside a lock of her blow-dried hair.
‘You look so different!’ Atharv said, trying hard to keep the admiration out of his voice. ‘Is today special?’ he asked hopefully.
It was their last night in Bhopal and the two of them were meeting one last time before heading to different colleges. Koyal wore a fitted red salwar kameez, a dress Atharv had only seen her put on most reluctantly during festivals. She had kajal in her eyes and her face glowed more than usual. Atharv idly wondered if her lips were really that pink – or, horror of horrors, had Koyal Raje put on lipstick? For their last evening together, the two had ditched their friends last minute – something they’d increasingly been resorting to – and instead of heading to some swank restaurant for a fancy meal, had decided to do something they’d done almost every day in the last fourteen years. Walk and talk in the lane leading up to school.
‘Huh, it’s nothing!’ Koyal said. ‘I need to learn all this now.’
‘Why?’
