But I do, I still do. Sometimes your feelings are beyond your control, beyond the notion of right or wrong, beyond everything that logic dictates. Even after what happened I still wait for the weekends. I ask my mother to pick out my best clothes. She always says that I look amazing to her in my PJs, which I wear most of the time as they are the most comfortable, but I want to make an effort for him because he makes an effort for me. Every Friday after work he takes a bus from Delhi to Chandigarh to be with me over the weekend. He makes an effort to bring Samba along as I love to meet him. He plans the weekend and gets an old Hindi movie along for us to watch together. He updates a new playlist on my iPod every time he leaves—old Hindi classics because they are my favourite. While away on weekdays, he still drops in a text as soon as he wakes up and calls me each time he boards the metro—but we do not talk much. Because we can’t. There are several reasons why—I still have slurred speech and am undergoing therapy. I do not like hurting my mother as she doesn’t want me to get back on the same path that nearly led me to my own destruction. My mother had been with me like a rock while I was at my lowest and she didn’t want me to be with Ronnie for my own good. Also, because there was not much left to talk about.
I wonder if love can die. Can it? Or maybe I had just fallen out of love because he fell out of love first and now he had fallen in love again, but all I have in my heart for him is respect because he never left my side.
Sometimes I wonder if I am going crazy. I mean, I would consider it to be a possibility as sometimes I daydream and these dreams are not just very real dreams—the ones you wake up from sweating in your bed and shaking all over—these dreams are much more than that. These dreams are like reality; mostly my eyes are open, and I am transported into the past, never to the accident but to the events that occurred around it. I see things happening right in front of my eyes, I feel them happening to me, I feel touches, pain, heat, breeze; everything. My mind at times is not able to differentiate between these dreams and reality. I have, over the months, however, learned how to differentiate and I mostly can by pinching or biting myself hard. If it hurts, it is real; if it doesn’t, it isn’t. But sometimes even that doesn’t work. I am worried that my hallucinations are impacting my mother too, she looks scared every time I jolt out of these daydreams. She loves me, I love her back, he loves me too, but I wonder if I will be able to fall in love with him again.
Love needs to be taken care of. Love gets stronger when it is nurtured with more love, every day.
Love thrives on love.
Adira
Love is what makes the world go around. Love is what keeps everyone going. It can be your love for a parent, child, sibling, friend, lover, or a dream. But love is the basis of life. That is what I used to think. That is what I kept telling myself every time I felt love going away from me.
The thought that one could fall out of love never occurred to me until the day my mother mentioned it. My father and mother were getting a divorce. When I asked them why, my father just said that he loved me and would be there for me no matter what. His love for me would never lessen. My mother on the other hand remained quiet. She said that she would let me know one day when she got the answer herself. I was young and was honestly falling in love with a boy I had known for years—Raunak.
I understood love, the feeling that makes you burn when that person is close to you. A feeling that makes you giddy and stupid; that makes you believe everything is possible. I was experiencing the initial phase of love and was over the moon but, looking at my parents, I wondered if our fate would be the same. I had not confessed my love for him. My parents’ separation had kept me busy and worried, to say the least.
And then one day my mother told me the reason why she and Dad couldn’t stay together any longer. ‘We fell out of love,’ she simply stated.
‘Is that possible? Why did you fall out of love and when?’ I asked her, unable to understand how and why anyone could fall out of love!
‘When you love someone, you think that nothing they do will ever hurt you enough to unlove them, nothing that they say can make you not want them, nothing can make you fall out of love, for love is for life, isn’t it?’ my mother said lovingly, as she patted my back.
I nodded and she carried on, ‘Sometimes it takes a moment to fall out of love and sometimes years. Your dad and I, over many years, became different individuals as compared to the ones we were when we got married. Our priorities changed, our outlook towards life, needs, aspirations, everything that was so aligned years ago, now are completely different. As we evolved into these two people, we grew separately and we also grew apart. We fell out of love without realizing that we were.’ She had tears in the corners of her eyes.
‘When did you know?’ I asked her in a low voice, moving closer to her. I hugged her like I always did when I felt sad. I was sad for her and I was scared for myself. Did this happen to everyone? Does everyone fall out of love?
‘I don’t know. I realized it when your father said it out loud but somewhere I knew it. I just do not remember since when.’ She was not blaming Dad for the divorce, and I knew it, but listening to her tell me that Dad was the one who initiated it made me take sides. I sided with my mother. It is a very natural thing to take the side of one parent, the one you think is right, the one you think has been wronged, the one you love more. Even though it was a mutual decision to part and my mother explained it in as many words, I still took her side because I loved her more.
That conversation made me doubt my love, my feelings, his love, his sincerity, the fact that we could also grow into two different people, complete opposites who would want different things in life—then what? A separation after years or maybe months . . . who knows!
This made me keep my feelings to myself, while he pursued me, wooed me for months.
But time makes you forget everything, and it did so. Finally, I said ‘Yes’ to him and confessed my feelings. It was tough for me but I had seen my best friend get married and it kind of made me believe in love once again. ‘Probably what happened with my parents happens occasionally,’ I reasoned in my head and life was blissful.
Ronnie and I were in love, he loved me beyond words and nothing could make us fall out of love. So we moved in together.
That’s when I started noticing small changes. I called my mother worriedly after a few days, ‘Mummy, do you think there was anything that you and Dad could have done to not have fallen out of love? To have grown together instead of individually?’
‘Is everything okay between the two of you?’ she asked.
‘Yes! I just wanted to know, you know,’ I lied and prayed that she would not ask any more questions. Tears were welling in my eyes, ready to fall.
‘Hmmm . . . I . . . I don’t . . . well, to think of it . . . we . . .’ She was trying hard to explain it to me knowing very well that I needed her advice.
‘Adira, I think if two people can work on it together, give each other time, talk out the differences, then I guess it will be possible to stay in love forever. This is what everyone told us to do, this is what we eventually tried but it was too late by then. I think the moment one sees a small crack in a relationship and if one truly cares about it, the repair work should begin. Words, communication, and the will to understand the other person’s opinion heal the open wounds in a relationship. The sooner one begins the better.’ She sounded sure of what she was saying, and this was the first relationship advice anyone had given me in a long time.
‘I mean, if your dad and I would have realized that we needed to do our bit to keep our love alive, to keep ‘us’ going, we would have started talking initially. But as I said, we were late and that is why our love succumbed.’
So, as soon as the phone call ended, I knew what I had to do, I had to try and Ronnie had to try, too. But before I could ask him to do his bit, I had to begin with mine. So, I started talking to him, giving him his space, trying to resolve and not argue. Did it work? Not in my case!
But I was stubborn and kept trying and trying. It took a freak accident for me to realize that our love was not for life. I nearly lost my life in the process and lost my ability to move, see, talk and unconditionally love any other being.
For years the romance novels on my bookshelf had told me that love was the Force, love was the most important thing, love could never die, love prevails, it is not possible to fall out of love with the person who has your heart.
Did I still believe in what I had read? Could I still be in love with him?
Simply put, I had fallen out of love. I realized after the accident that it was indeed possible to fall out of love. It may happen all of a sudden in a moment or over many years, but it can happen. It happened with me over several months but it took me a moment to realize it. As I was leaving the party that night, I heard the newly-weds Piyush and Tamanna—my idea of a perfect couple—fighting in the bathroom. I heard Tamanna scream about how much she regretted getting married. Piyush said, ‘Love died.’ This was the moment that made me realize that I too had fallen out of love, and so had Ronnie. We had become each other’s comfort zones, someone to come back home to. There was no feeling of love but just a sense of familiarity that kept us together.
I decided that I had had enough of him ignoring me, I had had enough of being sidelined for something more important. I decided to take charge. Little did I know that the moment I decided to write my destiny, destiny wrote my fate in black ink.
Sadly for me, when I finally did resolve to get out of a relationship with an emotionally unavailable person, life threw me a bouncer and hit me hard. I got into a car with some other people, they were chatty and drunk and I was planning my next move—I had to gather all my things and move out. I wondered, where could I go? Tamanna would have been more than happy to help me but I now knew well that she was probably more stuck than I was—she was married to a man she didn’t love.
‘Mummy was right,’ I said absent-mindedly and had to apologize as the woman next to me stopped her conversation and looked at me with worried eyes. Did the aura of despair emit from me so much? Was I looking like the mess I felt I was? Maybe or maybe not. I didn’t have much time to ponder. My mind was made up, I had decided to go back and live with Mummy for some time as I needed her. I needed to be with my mother, talk to her and feel at home, she was the only home I knew of. I was her child and will always be but, until that moment, I didn’t realize how much I depended upon my mother for emotional support and guidance.
I fiddled with my bag and found my phone. I had to check if there was a flight or a bus available in the next few hours. Before I could unlock the screen, my body was being flung out of the car. I remember looking at the panicked faces of my friends. No one in the backseat was wearing a seat belt; this is the norm in India. Glass shattered, I felt something heavy land on me; it was a person. I was crushed awkwardly under his or her weight. There was one more jolt and then everything went dark. These were my last memories and I know nothing of what happened next.
Trepidation—a feeling of fear or anxiety that something is about to happen.
Ronnie
24 March 2020
New Delhi
I was working from home that day and work-from-home mornings were usually rather lazy for me. My life was settled in my new routine. My weekends were spent with Adira in Chandigarh. Monday was my usual workday; my parents had gone back to the UK to help my sister with her baby number two on the way. It was a girl, and my mother was thrilled beyond words. I spoke to my parents every day when it was convenient for them. Tuesday was a work-from-home set-up for me as I used to spend the afternoon with Nani. Since my parents were out of the country, I made it a point to spend a day with her and keep her company. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were usual workdays with a few visits to my cousins who were now all married. Piyush and Tamanna had had a baby some months ago and were mostly busy. I was the babysitter they always needed and never paid. But I was happy with the set-up. After Adira’s accident, I remembered to keep all my loved ones close to me and make time for the ones who mattered the most. After all, our relations are all that we have—jobs, money, success, etc. are all secondary and I finally had got my priorities right. I also had another thing that I was working on; it was my idea that would make the world a better place. I had been working on it after work every day.
But my world shook as I heard the news; India was going into a lockdown for twenty-one days due to the pandemic. I had my Nani to look after in Delhi, my parents were stuck in the UK, unable to fly back even if they wanted to. I couldn’t visit Adira for three weeks and a deadly virus was taking over the country as I counted my miseries. Frantically, I called Piyush. Tamanna and Piyush had traveled to her Bengaluru home and were to come back on Friday. Unfortunately, they had to cancel their flight and now were to stay in Bengaluru for the next three weeks. It was a state of havoc and no one knew what to expect. Fortunately, Nani’s in-house nurse called in to say that she would be willing to stay over and help Nani during the lockdown and I was so thankful for her generosity.
I made a quick visit to Nani’s house, got a list of things needed for the next three weeks, picked up Samba as it was better if the cuddle bomb stayed at my house and not pester the nurse with all his unreasonable demands and needs. With the lists I headed over to the nearby shops. The scene at the market was something I can never forget. It was chaotic at best. People were shoving each other, bad-mouthing the authorities, cursing shopkeepers. Even though everyone had a mask on their faces, most people were wearing theirs under their mouths, protecting their chins from a zit of some sort. The prices of groceries were much higher than the MRP.
‘This is not how we are supposed to wear a mask,’ I politely told the person standing in front of me in the queue at the large convenience store.
‘I am asthmatic, I can die,’ she said, looking up at me.
‘You cannot die because of a mask,’ I stated as a matter of fact, realizing a little too late that most of the people around me were on her side.
‘You know everything, don’t you?’ an elderly man said. ‘He is a doctor,’ someone else chimed in. ‘You take care of your mask, do not worry about others, okay?’ came another voice. That was the moment I learned a vital lesson: Corona or no corona, I should stick to my responsibilities as people do not want to be schooled by a random stranger.
Because of the panic, the sudden news of the lockdown had spread. No one cared about the prices as long as the things they wanted to hoard were available. It took me five hours to complete the runs and still many items, including many of Nani’s medicines, were not available.
Trepidation was all that one could sense across the city.
A few months ago, Nani had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She was at the advanced stage; she was undergoing chemo and was fragile. Mummy and my other masi (maternal aunt) were her constant companions and took care of all her needs. But then Mummy went to the UK and Masi had to take all the responsibility on her shoulders. With Piyush’s new baby and the endless fatherly responsibilities that came with her, things got a bit more exhausting, and we got an in-house nurse so that Nani could get the support she needed. While the nurse stayed in the house all day, some family member or the other stayed over at night. I was worried and called Nani’s doctor to check what would happen to Nani’s chemo session in the coming week.
‘Corona is deadly for people with underlying conditions so I would advise we wait it out,’ the doctor told me. I was also advised to inform all the relatives not to visit as Nani could catch the virus and it could harm her the most because of our carelessness.
Calling everyone, reminding them not to visit Nani, checking if anyone needed me to help them in any way took me another few hours. At nine in the night, I dropped in a text to Adira: AWAKE?
YES came her reply instantly.
CAN WE TALK? I asked. She talked less over the phone mainly due to her mother and partially due to the slur in her speech. While there
had been a major improvement in her speech as well as her walk over the recent months, she was still very conscious of the changes.
I AM IN BED ALREADY, WE CAN CHAT she texted and I didn’t put any pressure on her to call me instead. I was happy with whatever she wanted as long as she let me be a part of her life. We were not together any more but she was always concerned about my life, health, job . . . everything.
SURE I texted her and then checked if she knew about the coronavirus and the lockdown.
Though she had no underlying conditions, her body was still weak and recovering. I didn’t want her to take any chances. She knew about the lockdown and her mother had prepared the house for the worst situation. Mrs Kapoor is a true hoarder and very resourceful. This was a reason I could sleep peacefully at night; her mother knew how to get things done. She was much better at managing people and tasks than most men that I knew. She was a strong woman and Adira had inherited her traits. I dropped a short message to her mother asking her if she needed me for anything. She didn’t respond but I had made myself available and she knew that she could depend on me. Whether she liked it or not, I was always there for her and her daughter.
Not taking up a lot of her nap time, I said goodnight to Adira and she went off to sleep. I, on the other hand, scrolled through her pictures on my phone. They had been taken recently; her mother had hired a photographer when Adira had taken her first few steps. In one of the pictures, dressed in a blue maxi dress, she was standing next to a tree in their neighbourhood park. Her eyes sparkled like those of a child when they learn how to walk. Her mother was with her in most of the pictures. Her beautiful smile reaching her eyes was mesmerizing. The mother and daughter looked so much alike! One could also see the glow of pride on their faces—they had come a long way. Adira had come a long way. In the picture, she looked like the sun, beautiful and bright—blinding even. She had always been my sun and I, like a lost planet, looked up to her, waiting for her to rise—my life revolved around her. My existence, my ecosystem, everything depended upon her.
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