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No, surely this couldn’t be true.
‘Oh my goodness,’ she said aloud when she finished reading. She folded the letter and jammed it inside a pocket in her bag. ‘Oh my goodness,’ she mumbled again, still incandescent with anger, but stunned at what the letter had revealed to her – how that seemingly innocuous fight with that fat boy back in school had set into motion two of the most horrific things to happen to her.
35
Atharv stared at the woman sitting next to him, her eyes shining like stars as she craned her neck to have a better look at the stage.
Koyal was wearing a blue dress that showed off her trim figure. Her long hair, left open, cascaded down her shoulders, framing her heart-shaped face. Atharv had felt a mild degree of surprise when, on first seeing her that evening, he’d had to force himself to peel his eyes off her.
Little girls, Mansha included, were beginning to line up on the stage in their beautiful pink and white tutus.
‘Thanks for coming,’ Atharv whispered to Koyal and she smiled in reply.
‘I am very proud of what you do, Atharv,’ she said softly.
Koyal had spent a few hours in the hospital before coming for Mansha’s dance recital and had had an opportunity to meet Atharv’s colleagues. She had felt immense pride at the amount of respect she could see his colleagues had for him. His work as a paediatric neurosurgeon was, to say the least, very impressive.
He stared into her eyes, and felt the world around them disappear.
‘And your dad would be too,’ she concluded and briefly rested her head on his shoulder.
As the music began to play, Atharv rested his head on Koyal’s.
‘We lost so many people in these ten years,’ she mumbled.
‘Yes, too many,’ he replied.
Music began to stream in now, not quite reaching Atharv and Koyal who sat lost in thought.
‘I am very sorry about Nili,’ Koyal said, looking up again.
‘Do you know, I thought of you very often during that time,’ he said, staring into her eyes. ‘I needed you then to help me get through…’
Koyal felt sadness and frustration. How she wished she could go back in time to be with Atharv in his darker days.
‘You know,’ Atharv whispered to her after a while, ‘that was the one time I regretted being a doctor.’
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘Because I knew exactly what each report meant. I had seen many patients with brain cancer, which Nili had, but never seen a survivor. As a doctor I knew hoping for a miracle was futile. Maybe if I were not a doctor, I’d have had some hope that would have made those weeks easier…’
Koyal snuggled in closer as if that would take away some of his pain, her heart aching for him.
‘It’s funny how everything is now both a hazy blur and crystal clear. They said they wanted to take the baby out and scheduled surgery for Nili the next day…’
Atharv was staring into space and Koyal was staring at him.
‘And then?’ Koyal asked.
‘She never came out alive out of the OT…’
Koyal rested her head on Atharv’s shoulder again, her eyes wet.
‘You know what is the absolute worst thing in all this?’ Koyal looked up at him. ‘She spent every second thinking of and for the baby and she never even got to meet Mansha…’
Atharv and Koyal, instinctively and at the same time, looked at the girls on the stage. There was Mansha twirling around happily, surrounded by the pink haze of her tutu, blissfully unaware of the sad story of her arrival into the world.
‘For the longest time,’ Atharv continued, ‘it was difficult for me to rejoice in Mansha’s birth. I loved her to bits, of course – just that the day of her birth was a tough one for me to deal with … till you came along…’ He now looked at her and smiled a small, sad smile.
