Just as I was about to sleep, there was a ping on my phone. It was a business email. I looked at it trying to make sense of what I was reading. The email carried that most awaited bit of news: a meeting with investors was scheduled in a week’s time.
Who says there is no bad time for good news? It did not appear to be a great time for me to be able to make anyone invest in anything. While pondering over my relationship with luck, my eyes closed, and I went into a dreamless sleep.
With infatuation comes impatience.
With love comes serenity.
Ronnie
I was feeling very low the next morning and I did not need a doctor to confirm that I had caught some bug. I hoped it was not COVID but there was only one way to tell, I had to get to a testing centre and get myself checked. As contagious as the virus was, I didn’t want to come in close contact with anyone and risk their health. It suddenly dawned on me that I had to tell Adira to get tested too. It was going to be a difficult task as we had kissed last night—it could have been the last kiss of my life! I hoped that she was okay and had not caught whatever I was living with. I was tempted to text or call her but then decided not to. If she too was unwell, it was better for her to rest. Even though I had been up since five in the morning due to a severe body ache and cold. Also, I recalled that sometime at night I had also managed to drop a text to my parents and then went off to sleep again. I had some twenty frantic phone calls from different numbers on my phone.
I had to call them back but first, I had to get tested. I had not even stepped out of my room yet and was waiting to hear some commotion from outside the room. Adira’s mother was in the kitchen. I had to tell her, so I made a phone call on the landline which she didn’t answer. I tried her cellphone too but as usual, it was on silent. Her mother picked up her phone only after nine-thirty every morning, which was a good practice and kept her away from unnecessary scrolling, something that I was addicted to these days. I had to go out and tell her in person, so I sanitized my hands and wore a fresh mask over my nose and chin. As soon as I opened the door, she turned around to face me. She had a smile on her face and looked happy that morning. Her face went from happy to worried in an instant and she asked me what happened.
‘I am down with something, it could be COVID,’ I told her blankly as there was no other way to say it.
‘Oh,’ escaped her mouth and her expression changed from worry to amusement. ‘I do not think it is COVID, you are an attention seeker,’ she said, giggling. ‘Not every sneeze is because of COVID.’
‘As much as I would be relieved to know that it is not, we cannot say just now that it isn’t. I went out yesterday to get some chips from the local shop. I am going to get tested,’ I informed the lady.
‘Okay, get tested and stay in the room,’ she told me, adding sternly, ‘I will get you breakfast in bed.’ I mean, offering me breakfast in bed was very kind and I didn’t want to break what we had built, but I had to. So I told her that Adira should get tested too. I expected her to ask me why and then I had to tell her all about the kiss, making it a very awkward last conversation of my life before she murdered me with a kitchen knife. But she just nodded and said, ‘All three of us will have to get tested and I will have to tell all the ladies I met last evening to isolate too until we get tested. I have been watching a lot of news lately. Telling all our close contacts to isolate is the best way to go about it.’ She was being Miss Know-It-All and it worked in my favour for a change. I was expecting a different scenario to play out than the one I had just witnessed and so I was relieved.
‘Yes!’ I told her, silently thanking my stars, for luck was not always on my side. Her lack of interrogation meant that I was going to live to see another day. I asked her to check on Adira before I picked up the car keys and left to take a test alone. Adira and her mother were to go for a test together later that day.
Upon returning, I was relieved to know that Adira was not feeling any different and most likely had not caught the virus. I went immediately into my room where a hot breakfast awaited me at the door. I bolted my door from within, had a little food and took another nap. I woke up at around mid-day with a heavy chest and leaky nose. There were several messages from my loved ones making me feel good and bad at the same time. Indeed, I had a life full of love and I had been a fool to not have realized it earlier. I responded to everyone in one line that I copied and pasted across all chats: I am better now, yet to get the results.
There were many texts from Adira, too, asking me if I needed anything, and so on. Adira and I texted a lot that day. Around mid-day, Adira and her mother too got their tests done and we had to wait for twenty-four hours before the results came in. I kept having the Crocin and soups that her mother was preparing for me every few hours and leaving outside the door.
My parents called me at around seven in the evening. It was a video call like every day but I was a mess when I answered the phone. My mother started crying looking at me and then her crying became more intense when I told her that I had taken the test for COVID. She had been living in the UK and had seen the worst with people dying in crazy numbers. Papa was better, and did most of the talking. I told them about everyone’s self-isolation. ‘Does anyone else have any symptoms?’ Papa inquired and I told him the truth. ‘I am the only lucky one,’ I tried to make a small joke which didn’t go well with Mummy. She got angry and started counting all the stupid things I had ever done in my life since the beginning and how it had always been my fault. She was high on emotion, and I was high on cough and cold medicines, so I just closed my eyes and reached my happy place. Adira’s face appeared, the wind playing with her hair, soft sand underneath her feet.
‘Are you even listening to me?’ My mother jolted me with her words. I had to open my eyes to face her, virtually.
‘Adira’s mom has been taking care of me, Mummy. She made me a lot of soup and got me medicines,’ I told her in an attempt to reassure her. But the thing with Indian mothers is that they fear losing their children to other people, for instance, their spouses and their parents.
So she began, ‘She is a career woman, she cannot nurse you back to health. You need your own mother, and I am stuck here. I do not know what wrongs I have done to see the day where someone else has to care for my unwell child . . .’ Papa giggled sitting next to her and I could not stifle my laughter any more; no matter how much it hurt, I had to laugh and then cough and then laugh again.
The call lasted one hour and thirty minutes where I saw my niece and nephew, spoke to my sister and brother-in-law, and updated them on the situation in India as they filled me with anything and everything they knew about recovering from COVID. Even though it was not confirmed that I was coronavirus-positive then, my family had kind of declared that I was on my deathbed. I wondered what would happen if the test indeed came out positive.
The twenty-four hours till we got the results were the longest twenty-four hours of my life. While I was not going out of the room, Adira was, and every time she was around my room or I heard her stepping into the kitchen, I wanted to follow her, talk to her in person, and see her. We had not been in the same room since our disrupted kiss last night and it bothered me as I wanted to know what she felt about it, if she felt anything at all, and if she was sure of what she had told me. But nothing lasts forever; the twenty-four hours until the test result did pass like a kidney stone but they passed nevertheless. Thankfully, both Adira and her mother came out negative; however, I was COVID-positive. I had to self-isolate and take precautions but as I had symptoms mimicking the common cold, I didn’t think it would be much of a deal at that time. Adira’s mother prepared soups and kadhas (herbal cold concoctions) for me and I knew that I would be in perfect health in no time. The kadhas were my mother’s recipes which she kept forwarding to Adira’s mother. All my meals were left at my door to maintain isolation. I had still insisted that Adira should get tested again in three days because we had spent some alone time together and I was worried for her
. Her mother had the same thoughts as mine and Adira agreed to take another test ‘if needed’. Our meeting with the investors was in a week’s time and I assumed that the cold would make me stick to my bed ensuring that I focused solely on the meeting and worked hard to secure the funding but, boy, was I wrong!
The most beautiful chapters in our lives are based on uncertainty.
Embrace love, embrace people, embrace what life offers.
Ronnie
Coronavirus was not just a mildly symptomatic flu for me. By the end of day five, I was tired the way I had never been tired in my whole life. My sense of smell and taste had vanished long ago, and my joints hurt as if I had been in an accident. There were no special medicines to be taken, I wheezed a lot and had difficulty concentrating. While it was difficult for me to breathe in certain positions at certain times of the day, it was weakness and pain that were killing me. The meeting was one day away and I was in no position to attend it. I was regretting my decision not to involve someone who was able to handle client meetings. Someone like Adira, but I could not ask her to just go to the meeting alone; she had never done this kind of work before and it would have been too much to ask of her. She had been helping me as much as she could. But I also knew in my heart that it was the best time for the app to be launched with so many students struggling and so many teachers who could use some extra income in these tough times. While I lay in bed doing some cost analysis for students as well as institutions, I heard a knock on the door. The door was already open. I looked up and saw Adira standing there, dressed in a peach sundress with a bowl of what I assumed was soup in her hand. I quickly slapped a mask on my face. ‘Please do not come inside, leave it at the door and I shall pick it up,’ I told her calmly, as if talking to a child.
She laughed at me and told me the same thing, ‘Why are you talking to me as if I am a toddler? I am not the one who is unwell, you are.’ She was right but I had lost Nani to COVID already, and I would never be able to bear it if I was the cause of Adira catching the deadly virus. I was worried for her and also for myself. If she did catch it, I would be in a worse mental state than I was in at that moment.
‘Relax, will you?’ she said, quirking an eyebrow when I didn’t say anything, as if she was reading my mind. Normally I found her breezy attitude cute but at that moment, my anger took over me. I had nearly lost her once; she was still on medication. I saw a look of pity for me flood her eyes; I was okay with that. I was okay with everything as long as she was healthy. She kept the food at the door, dragged a chair in, and placed it at a little distance from the door. She could see me from where she sat and I her. While I carefully got off the bed, sanitized my hands and walked over to pick up the food, she untied her hair tie and let her long hair loose over her shoulders. Several strands fell on her face, and she tucked them behind her ears. I could tell that she had just taken a shower; her hair was not dripping wet but was not completely dry yet. She tilted her head a little, studying me as I walked over to pick up my plate.
‘Why are you extra jumpy today? What is the matter?’ While a lot had changed between us over the months, her ability to read me amazed me. I shook my head at the wonderful girl who sat right in front of me when I had told her to go back to her room more than once.
‘The meeting is tomorrow,’ I told her flatly. There was no reason to cover it up any more; I just wanted to hide it for as long as I could so as to not pass on my worries to her.
‘With the big investors? From New York?’ she asked me with her eyes wide in amazement, happiness brimming on her face.
It was a dream for me and she knew how much I wanted this dream to come true, almost as much as I wanted her to come back to me. This could make my career as an entrepreneur, this deal could be my first step into the world where I could achieve everything I wanted for myself and give Adira the promise of the life that she deserved. ‘Yes, but my head is so heavy, and I feel like the worst symptoms of corona have hit me today. I tried to look at the presentation but couldn’t concentrate at all. The screen made my eyes teary and . . .’
‘I can go on the call for you,’ she offered. ‘I know about the project and the latest developments. I can handle it, trust me. I even spoke to the vendor who did the dummy video the other day, remember?’ It was a fact, Adira and I had worked together over the last several weeks. She had been very keen to know about everything and I was more than happy to share the details. She knew more about the project than anyone else who had worked on it, including Piyush, but was she ready to take on such a big responsibility? The meeting was a make-or-break point for us.
‘Will you be able to manage?’ I didn’t want to burden her with more work than she could handle. She raised one eyebrow asking me why I was questioning her ability. I was honestly not doing that; she was capable, but I didn’t want her to overwork. Also, it had been my dream. I had been a part of everything related to TeachMee right from its conception and I wanted to be a part of everything related to it in the future too. But I also knew that my condition was deteriorating and I was not in the right frame of mind to manage the call and bag the investment either. I had to think of the bigger picture, so I said yes and saw her jump and squeal in joy.
‘I had been waiting for something like this, something that would make me get up and work! I will not disappoint you, trust me,’ she said, nearly at the door now. I had a sudden urge to hug her and feel the warmth of her joy but that was not the right thing to do. So I just curled my fists and looked down at my plate; there was khichdi for me to eat.
‘You eat in peace,’ she said, ‘and I will come back to you in some time so that we can prepare.’
I nodded and she ran back to her room.
We decided to sit together a few times that day for a knowledge transfer, virtually, of course. She knew most of the things and surprised me with her knowledge of the numbers and statistics that I had used for cost as well as profit projections. By the end of that evening, I was very confident of her as well as TeachMee. ‘We are going to do great!’ I told her at the end of the video call. She nodded at me, then her eyes squinted at the screen. She was still looking at the slides and seemed to be thinking about something.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘The initial projections in the first two slides were revised by you three weeks ago,’ she told me, and I moved back to the slide she was referring to.
‘Yes, the numbers were as per the latest reports that I had got my hands on and I updated it on all the slides.’ I had managed to get access to some new data and was happy that I did because the data was recent. It made the projections near accurate and our case very strong. The new data also made the profit margins soar, which was key for securing the investment.
‘The data on the last several slides don’t correspond and neither does the final figure,’ she said slowly, which shook my world.
‘What?’ I made all the changes myself and I had checked them, or had I? Did I change the data on the last slide? I was not very sure all of a sudden, so I moved to the last slide to check. She was right, I had not made the changes on the last slide. It just needed some calculations and the numbers had to be changed but I was all of a sudden not very sure if I could do it correctly. ‘Can you do it?’ I asked Adira. She shook her head. Her expertise was client management, and she could handle meetings very well, but when she said that she didn’t want to touch the numbers, I understood her apprehensions and didn’t pressure her. She pursed her lips and sat thinking. Our screens froze and just like that, it was 2018 again. The same face, the same eyes, her hair falling on her slender neck, her gaze making me want to do everything for her. But it was not 2018 any more, the phones were better, the connection was better, too, so before I could take a screenshot, the phone screen went blank and the device restarted.
Unlike 2018, she was physically very close to me so, instead of making another phone call, she walked up to my room and stood at the door. I quickly grabbed my mask before I growled at her, ‘
Why do you walk in here when you know that I am contagious?’
She put out her tongue ever so slightly, pressed it between her teeth, and took a few steps back with her hands in the air and all my anger vaporized. She knew her power over me and exactly how and when to use it. I saw her lips stretch into a wide smile and I was at her beck and call already. Why does the heart not listen to the brain?
‘The call dropped,’ she explained. ‘So, what are we planning to do now?’ she asked.
‘I will try and do something. I will ask Piyush or Tamanna to work on it.’ Though the couple had been silent partners, they knew everything about the project as I had been sending them weekly updates. It was a small favour to ask, and I knew that they would be more than willing to help, especially because their money was at stake.
‘Hmm . . . I would rather hope that you did not disturb them,’ Adira said. It occurred to me that I was missing some piece of information there and I waited for her to elaborate. ‘Tamanna has caught COVID too. She doesn’t have many symptoms, just the loss of smell and a slight fever, but they have a child that Piyush needs to look after and this will be added work.’ Under no circumstances was I going to exploit the fact that Piyush and Tamanna were kind people. They had been kind enough to spend on my idea.
‘Why did you not tell me?’ I asked her, partially knowing the answer.
‘You are not well and would have been worried unnecessarily. Tamanna is in a better state than you, but they already have too much on their plates. We need to find another way,’ she spoke like a teacher and even though I was feeling like shit, I laughed. She looked at me like I had grown two heads. ‘What is so funny?’
‘You are, when you try to be all stern and bossy.’
‘Ha ha,’ she said and pressed her temple with her left finger. ‘I think I know someone who is perfect for the job but you might not like him touching your dream project,’ she said and I instantly knew who she was talking about.
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