Till the Last Breath . . .

by Durjoy Datta

  ‘Could you hear us talking?’

  ‘You were shouting.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Ex-girlfriend?’ she asked, even though she knew the answer to her question, her eyes firmly on him.

  Dushyant didn’t answer for a bit. At a distance, he could see the bunch of lights he recognized as his college hostel. He wondered if Kajal was back in her hostel room … or with Varun. Was she still thinking of him? Was she crying? Did she tell Varun where she’d been?

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We broke up two years back. I did something stupid and she left me. I tried to win her back, but she was gone. I hadn’t seen her since then,’ he mumbled and wondered if he should tell her what had happened that night.

  ‘She wants to come back?’

  ‘I don’t know what she wants,’ he said and climbed on to the ledge. Unlike Zarah, who was at ease with her legs dangling on the other side of the ledge, he was petrified. The hundred-foot drop made his heart pump fiercely.

  ‘Careful,’ Zarah said and laughed boisterously. Unhindered and unpretentious. He looked admiringly at the sharpness of her nose, the cheekbones and the perfectly fitting trousers. Too stunning to be a doctor, he thought. With the mild hallucinogen in his bloodstream, he could see images of a bikini-clad Zarah turning heads on an exotic beach in Brazil.

  ‘Why haven’t you told your parents yet?’ she asked. ‘And how long do you think you can keep up with the medical expenses?’

  ‘I have more money than it looks like,’ he said.

  ‘Rich parents, eh?’

  ‘My father is a clerk and my mother is a housewife. They haven’t sent me a single buck since my second year,’ he answered.

  ‘Then how?’ she asked. He searched for signs of shock on her face but found none. She was too high to care.

  ‘I am a face that people forget. But I am also a brain that forgets little.’

  ‘So you do little brain-trick shows for people?’ she chuckled.

  ‘Not really, but close. You remember those multiple-choice questions we had to answer to get through entrance examinations?’ She nodded and he continued, ‘I was brilliant at that. In eleventh grade, my coaching-institute teacher had noticed that and made me take an exam for a rich kid in the senior batch. I cracked three exams for the kid. All we needed was to click a picture of his which looked like me, and it was done. It was five thousand for each exam. My teacher had a new car the very next week.’

  ‘So?’ Zarah looked disturbed. Finally!

  ‘Business slowly grew. I started taking every type of exam. BBA, MAT, CAT, engineering and even medical entrances. I have taken the board exams, tenth and twelfth, every year since then. I know all the textbooks by heart. I make more money in those four months of examinations than people make in years. I am a safer bet than a leaked paper or two years of expensive coaching classes. If I am not caught, I have a zero rate of failure. And I come cheap.’

  Last season, Dushyant had taken thirteen board examinations, nine engineering entrances, four BBA entrances and a few MBA entrances. He took the GRE five times and a whole host of other exams which now he couldn’t even remember. None of the surrogate examinations went cheaper than twenty thousand rupees. He made 8 lakh that year. What with his failure rate of zero, people clamoured at his doorstep, even paying the entire sum upfront.

  ‘How long have you been doing this for?’ Zarah asked and lit up the last joint.

  ‘It’s been five years now,’ he said. ‘And I have been saving up. I don’t go out on expensive dates or have any indulgences. I have a lot of it with me.’

  ‘All you spend is on alcohol and drugs,’ she murmured.

  ‘A lot of that comes free for me. I took an exam for an army officer’s kid one time. My alcohol comes cheaper than you can imagine. For other things, I have my sources. I am a loyal customer and I never get into trouble with the police or anything.’

  Zarah threw the burnt joint away. She turned silent.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Umm … Nothing.’

  ‘Something is wrong. I thought we were discussing stuff,’ he said.

  ‘I am an army kid, too,’ she conceded.

  ‘You don’t come across as an abrasive brat.’

  Zarah shot an icy stare at him. Dushyant had always thought of army kids as extrovert bullies. The constant variation in environment and the change in schools made them competent to handle any social exchange with ease. They grew up a lot faster, matured faster and came across as extra-smart brats.

  ‘Is that what you think about army kids?’ she asked.

  ‘I am not putting them down or anything. In fact, as a kid I wished I was as cool as them. So, are you like that?’

  ‘Not really. I don’t think so,’ she answered and added with a pause, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘What? Did they beat you or something? Because that’s okay. Mine did. You wouldn’t believe how much my father beat me when I couldn’t clear the IIT entrance examination. Before the exam, I was more scared about what he would do to me if I didn’t clear the exam rather than the exam itself. It’s ironic—since that year, I have cleared it thrice for other people,’ he said. ‘See this,’ he pointed out to a few circular scars on his left forearm.

  ‘Are these cigarette butts? He burnt you?’

  ‘More times than I can remember. Every time I didn’t score well in a coaching-class examination, he would thrash me mercilessly,’ he said. ‘And this one is a belt-buckle wound.’

  ‘Didn’t your mother say anything?’

  ‘I think sometimes she wanted to. But she was used to it. I think she thought I deserved it,’ he explained. ‘Plus, I used to get beaten up once a month. Or less. The frequency wasn’t any higher. Sometimes, it was just a few slaps. Everyone gets those. But he constantly kept me in fear. It was a nightmare,’ he said. For a moment, he wondered what made him blabber so much that night. Was it the joint? What was it about this girl that gave him verbal diarrhoea all of a sudden? He hadn’t shared the agonizing details of his troubled teenage years with anyone other than Kajal. Everyone who knew him was aware that Dushyant hated his monstrous parents with all his heart, but no one knew where it came from.

  ‘What happened after that?’

  ‘Nothing. I put up with their bullshit till the first semester. They stopped sending me money after I finished third in class. So, I started earning on my own. Then, I didn’t need them,’ he claimed.

  ‘How did they react?’

  ‘They struggled to understand what was happening for the first few months. I didn’t call them. I didn’t ask for money. They came to my college a few times to check what had gone wrong. Eventually they found out that I had started smoking and drinking. Dad whipped out his belt again, but I fought back. I was much stronger …’ His voice trailed off. He felt Zarah lean into him. Suddenly, he became conscious of her physical proximity.

  ‘And?’

  ‘They have softened up a little. I didn’t talk to them for six months. Sometimes, they had to come to the hospital after my episodes of drunken madness. They still try to tell me that I am a failure and how they wished they had brought up a dog, not a son. But I have a choice now of not listening to them. I exercise that. They are dead to me.’

  ‘Is that why you do this to yourself? Torture yourself to torture them? Like you did when Kajal left you.’

  ‘Are you a psychiatrist now?’ he asked, and then moved on. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. I just want them to feel sorry for what they did. Make them feel that they lost me because of their behaviour. And yes, I do want them to feel miserable.’

  ‘You’re destroying yourself to do that?’

  ‘I am not destroying myself … Well, maybe, I am. But I like my life. I like doing what I do. It might have started out like that, but it’s no longer that. I used to be bothered at first. Now, I don’t care that I don’t have a family to go back to.’

  Zarah was quiet. Dushyant knew his story forced people to consider th
eir previous judgments about him. He never had any illusions about his failures in life or his detestable nature, but he knew he wasn’t the worst either. No matter what he did, he knew he would always be better than his father. With his eyes stuck firmly on her, he waited for Zarah to respond. People usually did, expressing sympathy for him, and then moving on with their lives. At the end of the day, he was a raging alcoholic and an addict who was meant to be hated, not understood.

  ‘We should go back,’ Zarah said.

  ‘So soon? After all this, don’t you think I should know about you a little too?’ he asked as he jumped down the ledge. Every bit of his body hurt. His heart eased a bit now that he wasn’t gazing at a hundred-foot drop.

  ‘Maybe later.’

  ‘A little bit?’ he asked.

  The inquisitive tone in Zarah’s voice had changed to a cold, professional pitch. ‘Let’s get you into bed,’ Zarah said and led the way back to his room. He followed soundlessly. She put him in bed, reattached the tubes and screwed them back on.

  ‘If you keep sneaking out like this, you will take more time to get better,’ she whispered.

  ‘More nights like these and I won’t mind staying here a bit longer,’ Dushyant said and felt someone else had said it. He had just flirted with her. Why did I do that? Zarah smiled and told him she would see him tomorrow. They shook hands and she left the room. There was something about her, this doctor.

  He knew she was hiding something from him, something about her parents. Whatever the reason for her sadness, it only made her alluring and desirable. Like an antique table that has character, the flaws—the tiny slit marks on her wrists—made her more beautiful. The layers to Zarah made her more intriguing. Even more beautiful than she was. For the first time since he had woken up in the hospital, he felt better.

  He was still dazed from the weed and the calm Zarah had helped instil in him when he heard someone sobbing softly from the other side of the curtain. He leant in the direction of the sound and saw Pihu’s father sitting near her feet. Pihu was sleeping and so was her mom. The man just caressed the toes of his little girl and kissed them lovingly, with tears in his aching eyes. His eyes were pure, black sadness.

  Dushyant’s breath stuck in his throat and he felt hollow inside. He wondered what Pihu had. He put his head back on the pillow and wondered if his dad would ever sit next to him and cry for having lost him.

  13

  Kajal Khurana

  Kajal was the third daughter of a rich business family based in Punjabi Bagh, New Delhi. Aseem Khurana, her father, dealt in converting unsuspecting animals into bags, shoes, clothes and the like. Getting into fashion and leather designing seemed like obvious career choices for the two elder daughters in the family. Kajal, younger by ten and twelve years to her sisters, was the spoilt one. By the time she entered college, both her sisters were happily married and, more importantly, incredibly successful businesswomen. The leather factory now had showrooms and boutiques all over the northern region. Money was never an issue. The smallest car she had ever driven was a puny Volkswagen Beetle that cost her father a small fortune. In spite of the abundant money and the cradling comfort, Kajal grew up to be a very sensitive, simple girl with a magical voice and a penchant for reading. She never shopped, never hankered for an iPhone or that awesome-little-black-dress-for-the-party-next-weekend, and was never comfortable in chauffeur-driven cars. Her only loves were music and books, which she indulged in with wholesome passion.

  No one expected her to choose science after her tenth board examinations, but she did. The bigger surprise came when she cracked the entrance examination and made it to a premier engineering college. Her parents—not really impressed with their daughter getting into a boys’ field—wanted her to go to London and study literature. But she was dead set on studying engineering. Her sisters, headstrong and no-nonsense, asked her to chase her dreams and make something of herself. They were sure Kajal would bring in the next wave of technology.

  Three years later, Kajal was disillusioned and wanted to quit college. Fluid dynamics, Fourier transforms and the like were not things she was interested in; she was just good at them.

  Kajal was the apple of her parents’ eyes; her wants were always put first. When she had first mentioned her discontentment—after her break-up with Dushyant—her dad had arranged for prospectuses of colleges in London where she could study literature. Or journalism. Or whatever young girls with kohl-lined eyes, dressed in kurtas, studied abroad. A little part of her had wanted to go. Not because it was the calling of her life, which she had conveniently ignored, but because she had wanted to run away. Only if she had left for London instead of continuing here, she would have never gone through the turmoil she faced now. The news of Dushyant’s illness had shattered her. The severity of his disease had been keeping her awake for days now. Varun hadn’t been helpful at all. With his eyes glued to the presentation on his laptop, he had asked her to get over it. Dushyant would have listened to me and not asked me to get over it if the roles were reversed, she thought. Against her good sense, she had gone to see him at the hospital, only to get ridiculed and be thrown out.

  As she made her way back to the auto she had come to the hospital in, she felt her grief first swell her heart, and then her eyes. For more than two years, she had tried to cut off that part of her life which Dushyant had been a huge chunk of. But the moment she set her eyes on him, her heart called out to her, jolting it out of its slumber.

  The contours of his face had hardened, the eyes were sunken, the beard was unshaved, but the sincerity in his eyes screamed for attention. The goodness of his heart, which nobody else but she could see, called out to her. It was as if two years had meant nothing, just a blip on the time–space continuum. Within an instant, she was back to the day he had first talked to her in the library. Since the break-up, she hadn’t gone back there. There were a lot of places they had been to together and a lot of things they had done together that had lost their charm once they parted ways. The library didn’t feel the same, the golgappas had lost their tang, and the late-evening walk in the park felt like a chore.

  The autorickshaw drive to Varun’s place was shorter than she would have liked. Don’t go, a voice inside her screamed as she paid the auto driver and then climbed up the stairs to the lobby of the fifty-storeyed apartment building in Connaught Place where Varun lived alone. His apartment was on the thirty-eighth floor from where one could enjoy a brightly lit view of Delhi at night. She had lost count of the nights she had spent staring aimlessly into space while Varun prepared for his next big meeting.

  ‘What took you so long?’ Varun asked as he opened the door. He was still in his office clothes. A finely striped shirt, now hanging over his crisp, ironed trousers. Varun was ageing faster than normal and looked more like thirty-two. He was ageing gracefully, though; the greys in his hair were patterned and looked good on him.

  ‘I stopped by at the hospital. I wanted to see how Dushyant was doing,’ she said. She searched for any change in the expression on his face. Disappointed, she looked away.

  ‘Want a drink?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t drink.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yes.’

  Kajal was annoyed. He had known her for ever. How could he overlook such details? It wasn’t the only thing, though. Time and again, she had chosen to forgive him, blaming it on the age difference, on the difference in the kind of lives they led and the kind of people they inherently were. They were both born into money, but while Varun had grown up to appreciate the luxuries of life, Kajal still loved her novels, her music and the dirty spice of street food more.

  ‘Won’t you ask how he was? How things went?’ she said, trying to incite him, to elicit a reaction of any sort from him. His calm demeanour, his uncaring self and absolute lack of possessiveness irritated her. Sometimes, she wished he would shout at her, scold her and threaten to leave her. Do something that would make her feel important, loved. Anything that would make her feel m
ore than a useless piece of furniture you turn to when tired. A few months back, she had even posted pictures of her with a guy Varun didn’t like, on Facebook. Still no response. Just a shrug and he moved on.

  ‘How’s he?’

  ‘He is alive. He has tumours and a failing liver.’

  ‘Will he live?’

  ‘I think he will, but he is in real bad shape,’ she said and added to exaggerate, ‘Though the doctors aren’t very hopeful. They are still to figure out many symptoms.’

  ‘I hope he gets well soon. He was always a little screwed up,’ he said and sat at a distance. One leg calmly crossed over the other, and he reached for the remote. ‘Want to watch a movie today?’

  ‘Isn’t that what we do every day?’ she asked, now angry. ‘And I just told you someone is dying and this is your reaction? Let’s watch a movie? Do you even care about what I want?’

  Her eyes sized up the guy she had been with for two years. He wasn’t the same guy she had known when she was younger—the older, wiser guy who could make everything all right with just a few kind words. Their perspectives were different now, and that had more to do with her discontentment than the seven-year age difference between them.

  ‘I am not having this fight again today!’ he growled, his voice rising.

  ‘WHY NOT? It’s not that we meet every day. Half the time, you’re out of town, and when you do have time for me, all you do is get drunk and fuck me. Or well, watch a movie.’

  ‘Excuse me—’

  ‘I am tired of this, Varun!’

  ‘Is this because of that guy you saw in the hospital?’

  ‘His name is Dushyant. Do you remember? Dushyant. I dated him before I dated you.’

  ‘I DO REMEMBER,’ he snapped. They were standing right next to each other. Varun towered over Kajal who was staring right at him. ‘The bastard who hit you and you came crying to me!’ he shouted, his hands flailing all over the place.