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‘Fuller scholarship?’
‘To Stanford.’
‘Wow,’ said Koyal. ‘I have no doubt it will be you.’
‘I need to get through to IMI first!’ exclaimed Atharv and then added after a brief pause, ‘I wish I had as much faith in myself as you have in me.’
‘I know you better than you know yourself,’ replied Koyal.
‘What about you? Plans after school?’
‘What makes you think I care?’
‘You are so clever, Koyal, I just wish you would…’
‘Apply myself!’ finished Koyal, laughing. ‘You sound so much like Ma sometimes. She keeps saying the same thing over and over again. Today, she said that perhaps one day on her deathbed she will ask me, as her one last wish, to start working hard and then I will listen to her.’
Atharv guffawed. ‘Will you even then?’
‘Maybe,’ said Koyal giggling. ‘Atharv,’ she said after a pause.
‘Yes?’
‘If we end up in different cities, will you forget me?’
‘How can I forget the best part of my life, Koyal?’ he asked.
‘I will be so, so, so lonely without you.’
‘I will be there even when I am not.’
‘What does that even mean, Atharv?’ said Koyal, smiling into the darkness.
‘That is what four a.m. friends are for, Koyal.’
‘Four a.m. friends?’
‘Look at the clock,’ he said.
Koyal smiled. It was four in the morning. ‘We are four a.m. friends,’ she whispered, awestruck.
‘Yes, that is what we are,’ replied Atharv. ‘I won’t hang up, you try to sleep. I am right here, studying.’
Koyal fell asleep in the next few minutes, holding the phone with Atharv on the line, close to her ears.
Atharv is there even when he is not there.
5
She couldn’t believe she was feeling sorry for him. This was the man who had almost driven her to suicide. Her mind went back to that night in kitchen when she had placed the knife against her wrist, ready to end her miserable existence. Better sense had prevailed.
Worry had creased his face like crumpled paper. He wanted this desperately and Dr Jacob, their last hope, was known to work wonders.
Half agony, half hope – the worst kind of hope.
‘Dr Jacob will see you now,’ a polite nurse came and said to them. They got up and started to walk towards the famous doctor’s office, their legs moving synchronically as if they were soldiers marching a parade. Inevitably, she found her mind wandering to the day she had that conversation with him.
‘Um…’ she tried, once she was sure he was happy with the omelette she had made for him for breakfast. She had chosen the day and time with care – it was a Sunday and he seemed relaxed. She had just reread the email from her friend, and the two-three lines in the second paragraph, written most casually, had her seething with a mix of anger and jealousy, just as they had when she’d first read the email two weeks ago. The two weeks she had taken to deliberate hard on what she needed to do.
