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I opened the box again and the familiar tune started playing, the gentle notes filling the silence in the car. I breathed deeply and closed my eyes, concentrating on each note that was ingrained in my memory and my heart. Thoughts ran around in my head, randomly at first, then aggressively and finally in a straight line as things fell into place. Like magic, in a span of a few seconds, with
the music playing in the background, the clouds parted and the sun shone.
I opened my eyes and looked around. The world somehow seemed different. Something had just happened – something beyond my reckoning and beyond logic – that had helped me make a decision. It was, I realized, an epiphany. In that one moment, I felt closer to God than I had ever before. Dad had asked me to meet Rajeev. Now, finally, as the song finished and the ballerina stopped twirling, I understood why.
With my decision made, I patted the box and smiled for the first time in what seemed like ages. I slapped the steering wheel. It felt nice to be sure. Grinning my widest, I turned the ignition of the car back on. I needed to meet Purva immediately. Meet him and tell him how horribly idiotic I had been.
Only, I never got to do that.
21
7.10 p.m.
I imagined myself to be quite the Bond girl as I swerved my little red Maruti Swift through the traffic heading straight towards AIIMS and Purva. Not another moment should be lost, I told myself sternly. Enough of the madness.
I overtook another car and got screamed at by the driver of another. This whole mad dash across the city thing, it so appealed to my sense of drama. Beautiful girl in a red car, zipping across the city to tell a handsome doctor that it was him her heart beat for. Aah. The theatrical zing.
When I had agreed to marry Purva, I had done so as a compromise. Purva was even sensitive enough to realize that. I remember, he had said, gruffly, ‘I know, Kasturi, that you do not love me, but I hope that one day you will.’
My wounds, then, were too raw, the hurt ran too deep for me to be capable of real, true love. Purva, obviously, loved me and, having walked away from a man who did not return my love, all I’d wanted was someone who loved me more than I loved him.
Purva had fit that bill perfectly. Too perfectly. He was a man I could trust without an iota of doubt. He was a man who would risk his life for me. He was the man every girl wanted.
Except, of course, me. I just wanted Rajeev.
Yet, I egged myself on to forget Rajeev and limped towards Purva, who stood waiting patiently for me, his arms wide open, ready to collect me in a warm hug. Rajeev’s treachery aided me and each time I faltered, I thought of him with Teena and ran a little bit faster towards Purva. Initially, I just pretended that Purva made the world all right for me, but gradually I began to forget Rajeev.
Mum, Dad, Pitajee, Anu – everyone loved Purva for his gentle manners and kind ways. They thought I had hit the jackpot with Purva. As I began to forget Rajeev, the hurt and misery began to become foggy as well. However, he was with Teena and that thought alone continued to sear through me as if it were a sword on fire that had been shoved through my heart.
And then, just when I had immersed myself completely in making paranthas, came the emails. Out the blue they arrived, bursting through the fabric that I had woven and wrapped myself in. Simply put, they turned my life upside down. They took me back to a time when I’d had a man in my life whom I had loved so much that I felt I would burst. I recalled how a single look from him could have me smiling for hours, how one hug from him would keep me warm for days and how one kiss from him would linger on my lips for weeks. That made me restless, so restless that Purva seemed like a handcuff, something that stopped me from being with the man I was secretly pining for. Upset, confused, bewildered at the tricks my heart played with me and scared of what I felt, I decided that I should not marry Purva; not in such a state of mind.
Or so I thought.
Then Dad asked me to meet Rajeev.
A lot of people told me that I was being stupid but the words that really hit home were those of Padma’s. It was when I was sitting in the car, Purva’s box playing the little ditty in the background, that I understood why Dad asked me to meet Rajeev; he had known that it would be the moment of reckoning. Faced with the choice, I would know which man I truly loved. He had been right.
I was so busy trying to forget Rajeev, so engrossed in not letting him overpower everything in my life, that I had not realized something important. Along the way, I had, unknown to myself, fallen in love with Purva. I smiled now, glad that my head was clear. I could finally breathe easy. At last I knew what I wanted and who my loyalties lay with.
My cell rang. Mum’s number flashed on the screen.
‘It must be Dad,’ I said to myself, ‘returning my call.’
It was not. It was Mum. Breathless.
Ten seconds later, I had stamped my feet so hard on the brakes that a car behind had rammed into me. My car skidded a few feet before coming to a halt.
‘Say that again, Mum?’ I said into the phone, feeling the blood drain from my face.
‘Dad’s being wheeled into the OT,’ she said, surprisingly calm.
‘Why? What’s wrong with him?’ I screamed, already hysterical.
‘They … umm … need to operate.’
‘Operate on what?’ I asked. Maybe it was his foot, he had had some ligament issue last month. I knew even as I asked the question that this would not be the case.
‘Umm … don’t get scared, Kas, it’s…’
