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It hurt everywhere.
But mostly, the pain was in her heart.
She wondered how it had all come to this, when life had started so beautifully.
2
So this is the weird thing about all memories, Koyal would tell herself. You never really know when you are making them up.
Especially the ones with Atharv in them.
For, as hard as she would try later to think of her first memory of him, this hazy picture – of the two of them walking side by side on a road lined with gulmohar trees on a summer morning – would come to mind. He has a bag on his shoulders so they are going to school. Surya Aunty, Atharv’s mother, loud and full of life as always, is probably walking behind them, so they are at least five years old.
His hair is dishevelled and he has that crooked, early morning smile. His face is animated as he mumbles to himself. He is telling himself another story. Oh, his stories – how she loved them how she hated them.
She peers into his face. ‘You have muck in your eyes,’ she says finally.
His eyes meet hers briefly, and he nods his head in an intelligent way. Of course he has muck in his eyes, he always does. Sometimes when she can’t stand it, she will pull out her hankerchief and wipe it off for him.
‘You, by the way,’ he says, looking down now and kicking a stray pebble, ‘have a moustache.’
Surya Aunty’s sister is here.
Koyal is about nine and has realized two things.
One, she hates Surya Aunty’s sister with as much fervour with which she adores Surya Aunty.
Two, a tsunami resides insides her. A tsunami that scares her and in the face of which she is powerless. It is darker than the night and scarier than the ghosts Atharv spins yarns about. She senses it each time it raises its head, this tsunami of anger, and when it does, Koyal is beyond logic and reason. Koyal’s mum says she gets it from her father’s side, but Koyal knows that no one has it as bad as she does.
‘Atharv is a very irritating boy,’ Bhavna Aunty says, grinning at Koyal.
Bhavna Aunty is pretending to be funny, Koyal knows, for Atharv is anything but irritating, but she cannot rein in that stirring in her chest. Why wouldn’t Bhavna Aunty shut up?
‘And there is this girl in your colony that I think he really likes.’ Bhavna Aunty is now narrowing her eyes at Koyal teasingly, hoping for a reaction.
Ma and Surya Aunty, blissfully unaware, are laughing over a cup of tea in the background. Koyal thinks about the two women. Their friendship is like a stream in the hills, happy and carefree. It is the best kind of friendship, but not better than the one she has with Atharv, which is, she thinks, like the sea, deep and endless.
Atharv is sitting there quietly, engrossed in a book as he always is. However, Koyal knows he is listening to it all and choosing not to react. If only Koyal could be like that.
‘He likes her more than he likes you,’ Bhavna Aunty says finally, and before she can finish her sentence Koyal has lunged for her eyes.
‘He is my friend,’ Koyal is hissing at Bhavna Aunty, blind with anger, and soon Atharv, Surya Aunty and Ma are trying to pull her away.
One tight slap, a long lecture on anger management and even threats of boarding school from Ma have no effect on Koyal. But one ‘that was so not cool’ from Atharv gets her teary-eyed.
‘Promise me,’ he says, holding her hand, ‘you’ll never react like that ever again, no matter what anyone says about me?’
Koyal nods, her head hanging in shame.
But she knows, as well as he does, that is not possible.
She is 11.98 years old today (he has just done some maths on his palm which is now all blue from the ink of his pen). Tomorrow is her birthday. He is, he has told her, 12.42 years old already. His maths is all wrong, she knows, but she doesn’t say anything. It is complicated, this ‘knowing’ business. She likes to know things but never wants people to think she cares enough to know.
‘Your brand new email is ready,’ he says to her.
She is suitably impressed. Email is the coolest new thing, everyone on campus seems to have an ID.
‘What is my ID?’
