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‘I am sorry, Kas,’ he said in a soft voice.
‘All I wanted was to spend time with you on my birthday,’ I said in a small voice, looking at my hands.
‘Kas, I’m very sorry…’ his voice trailed off.
I noted, then, that his eyes seemed heavy with sleep…
‘You did not call me the whole day! Who does that?’
‘An idiot,’ he said, grinning. Not a fresh-faced happy grin, but a sad grin that failed to reach his eyes. The anger I had been harbouring inside me now seemed to ebb away just a little bit.
‘Have you eaten?’ I asked, in spite of myself.
‘Not in the last thirty-six hours,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders.
Without another word I got up, went into the kitchen and returned with sandwiches and milk.
‘Eat,’ I ordered curtly, and handed the tray to him. Purva’s amused eyes followed my every movement. He smiled, took the tray from my hands and placed the food on the bed. He then took my hands in his.
‘Dheerbahi slum caught fire ... you might have seen it in the news...’ he said, staring at my hands ‘They brought all the casualties to AIIMS. I was the doctor in charge. A school … seventeen kids…’ he shook his head, reliving the memories. ‘I saw forty-seven people die … bit much even for me,’ he finished with a weak smile.
‘Oh,’ I said. So this was why no one could reach him. The anger that had already begun to ebb was now quickly being replaced by immense guilt and shame.
‘I am sorry, Kasturi. I know this birthday was important to you. It was important to me too, but I … I could not get away,’ he said in his characteristic low, grave voice, his intense gaze searching my face, reading each thought as it passed through my head.
‘You have not slept either, have you?’ I asked, smiling.
‘I need to go back in an hour,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘Eat this,’ I said, pointing to the food, ‘and sleep on my bed. I will wake you up in an hour.’
Purva stared at me without blinking for a few minutes. He then got up, stretched himself to his full height of six feet and, pulling out a nicely wrapped box from his backpack, handed it to me.
‘Happy birthday, sweetheart,’ he said in a voice so low that it was almost a whisper. ‘I love you.’
Simple words, earnestly spoken by the tired man I loved, found their way straight to a place somewhere deep in my heart. I hoped fervently that Purva’s gift would be a box of expensive chocolates or a piece of jewellery. Anything more and I knew I would be in tears.
I unwrapped the gift and found myself staring at something that was very familiar.
For my seventh birthday, Mum and Dad had gifted me a musical box. Open it and a pretty delicate ballerina twirled to Mum and Dad singing happy birthday to me. I had spent an entire year doing nothing else but opening and closing the box. Predictably, it broke from overuse. Even then I could never let go of the turquoise box with the twirling ballerina inside it. It stayed with me when I left home for engineering college, came back home with me when I finished, went with me to B-school, came back home again and now was – or so I thought – with me in my apartment.
A spruced-up, sparkling-new version of the same box was now in front of me.
‘Open it,’ said Purva, staring intently at me.
The ballerina from my childhood appeared and, to my utter delight, began to slowly twirl around.
I shrieked with joy. However, before I could even look up at Purva, the sound of Mum and Dad singing happy birthday reached my stunned ears. Dad had taken this box to so many repair shops but it could not be fixed.
‘Is this a new box?’ I asked, bewildered. Mine broke almost twenty years ago and repeated attempts to put it right had failed.
‘No,’ said Purva. ‘The same one.’
‘But that one … it … it didn’t work…’
‘This has been my project for the last two months,’ he said, smiling proudly, his face suddenly looking a little less tired.
‘Oh my god,’ I whispered to myself as I rubbed the turquoise box in wonder. It was almost like being reacquainted with a lost, yet integral, part of my childhood. The mystical, magical, wonderful music box.
