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A long-forgotten image suddenly flashed in Koyal’s mind. Ma had been crying for some reason and Atharv, with all the wisdom of a fourteen-year-old, had stood up, walked up to Ma. And without saying a word, wrapped his arms around her. Ma had sobbed into his chest and he had stood like that, all manly, all strong, holding the mother of his best friend.
‘I am there for you, Aunty,’ Atharv had said.
‘I know you’ll always be there for me,’ Ma had said, looking at Atharv with the look she usually reserved only for her son.
‘Four years…’ Koyal mumbled, looking at her hands now, biting her lips, very sure she didn’t want to cry. ‘She had been unwell for a long time before that…’
Silence.
‘Um…’ Atharv was staring hard at the carpet, trying desperately to keep his voice steady. Koyal, surprised that even after all these years, she could still understand everything he was not saying, looked around helplessly for someone to just go and give that man a hug.
‘Um… I … I…’ he said, now looking up at her, the helplessness in his eyes breaking her heart.
Someone. Anyone. Just please give him a hug.
‘Um … the illness?’ he asked, his eyes red.
‘Her kidneys…’
Atharv grimaced. ‘Dialysis?’ he asked
‘Three and a half years,’ she said and he shook his head sadly and slowly.
‘Was she…’ and Koyal coul
d plainly see how difficult this was for him’. ‘Was she…’ he passed his hand over his forehead, ‘was she … okay … of course, she wasn’t okay, I mean, was she very, very ill?’
Someone please, please go give him a hug, the voice in her head screamed.
‘No…’ she said, looking at his huge, wet eyes, feeling her heart break all over again. ‘She was physically weak, yes, but emotionally … mentally … you know, she told me a Santa Banta joke the night before.’ Tears were now streaming down her face.
Atharv looked at her, his eyes and nose red.
‘Really?’ he said, smiling. ‘Which one?’
Koyal laughed through her tears. ‘A really, really bad one.’
And Atharv smiled, and for one instant, one fleeting instant, they were back to being best friends.
You could speak a thousand words and some people won’t hear one.
You need not speak a single word and some people will hear everything.
Silence broken only by the gentle ticking of the huge grandfather clock. Two people, friends once, strangers now, sat wrapped in their thoughts.
Finally, Koyal spoke. ‘Nili…?’ she ventured bravely. Somehow she knew the walls were back up now, the moment of forgiveness and friendship had passed.
‘Six years ago,’ he said in a voice devoid of any emotion.
Koyal wanted to tell Atharv how sorry she was, but the word seemed remarkably insufficient. She had spent the last ten years envying Nili, Atharv’s love – her jealousy for what she had imagined was the perfect love story had cast an ugly shadow on each aspect of her life – but she had never, she now realized, not wanted Atharv to be happy.
Surya quietly re-entered the room and had just settled into a chair when a voice yelped, ‘Dadi!’
A little girl in a pink and white sleep suit raced through the room and jumped into Surya’s lap, burying her face in her shoulder.
Surya laughed and patted the little head before wrapping her arms around her.
‘Why is Dadi’s little monkey not asleep?’ she mumbled into the girl’s thick black hair.
