A Breath of Fresh Air

by Amulya Malladi

  “I am thirsty.”

  We were instructed not to give him anything to eat or drink while he was being fed intravenously.

  “How about some ice chips?” I suggested, and opened the small icebox next to his bed. I wet his lips and his mouth and let the ice chip fall on my hand when he spat it out. I wiped my hands on my sari and waited to see if he wanted more ice.

  He knew. I could see it in his eyes.

  The knowledge of death was a very big responsibility to shove on such a young boy. Adults who had lived a full life were afraid of death; a twelve-year-old boy must be petrified and outraged at the injustice. He had barely lived and now he had to face death. He had seen and done so little, had so many dreams and aspirations, none of which would come to fruition.

  He should die easily, without knowing he is going to die, I prayed.

  Sometimes I used to dream that a pill would be invented that would completely cure Amar. I used to wish for a miracle, but now I knew there were no miracles. His lungs were beyond repair and his heart was slowing down. Major Mohan had told us that it was only a matter of time, that respiratory failure was imminent.

  Sandeep, Komal, and I took shifts by Amar’s bed. Although she hated me, Komal loved my son, and she sat with him, reading from storybooks and giving him ice chips whenever he woke up.

  Gopi and Sarita insisted on staying with Amar so that Sandeep and I could get some rest. But I was there even when they came by.

  Sandeep phoned and told my parents that Amar was very sick. They asked if we wanted them to come, but Sandeep asked them not to. The train journey was over ten hours and we had enough problems without dealing with my parents’ aggravating presence.

  I couldn’t leave Amar’s side. I stood guard as if I could fight against destiny, against death.

  “He might still get well,” Komal tried to console me. “He talked last night.”

  He had talked for about two minutes before falling back to sleep. I had never felt this helpless before. I had always fought against fate and what life offered me, and I had tried to win each time. This time there was nothing I could do but let him die. But I was his mother. Wasn’t it my job to save him and protect him? He was in this world, in this hospital, because I had birthed him.

  I couldn’t blame Prakash anymore with a clear conscience. He had given Amar a better hospital and better medical care. I would forever be grateful. This Prakash was different from the selfish Prakash I knew. This Prakash felt pain and guilt. I wished him the best in his life. Sandeep was right, it didn’t matter that we owed him.

  Promises meant nothing if breaking them could help our son.

  After Prakash had said he wouldn’t give me any alimony, I had vowed to never take anything from him. I had promised myself that I’d never let him into my life again. I had promised myself that I’d never speak to him again. And I was doing all those things and feeling no regret. How could I have any ego, any shame where Amar was concerned?

  Sandeep came to the hospital in the evening and sat with Amar. One of us still had to work. We had not managed to save any money since Amar was born and our lives still had to go on somehow even if our son’s wouldn’t.

  Sandeep read him stories, about fairies and goblins and pixies. He brought Amar’s record player to the hospital and we played Kishore Kumar’s comedic Hindi movie songs alternated with his serious ones. I read him Shakespeare.

  It had been just four days since he had been admitted to the hospital, but it felt like a lifetime. As if we had been there forever and Amar’s hospital room was our home.

  The nurses were warm and kind and they even fed Sandeep and me. They checked on me when they checked on Amar. I was treated like a brigadier’s wife.

  On the fifth day of our bedside vigil, in the evening before Sandeep came, two children peeped into the room. They introduced themselves very nicely: Mamta and Mohit Mehra.

  Prakash’s wife followed them. Prakash hadn’t come to check on Amar, though I had a feeling he was in constant touch with Major Mohan.

  Indu stood beside Amar and smiled at me tentatively, while her children scrambled toward the area where I had piled up storybooks and comics.

  “How is he today?” she whispered.

  “The same,” I said.

  “Prakash said they will take him off the respirator so that he can breathe on his own,” she said.

  “Tomorrow.”

  She had tears in her eyes and I wanted to tell her not to cry for my son.

  “Please thank Prakash for what he did.” It had to be said. “We will forever be—”

  “He didn’t do it to be thanked,” she said sternly. “He did it so that he could sleep at night.”

  “Whatever his reasons—”

  “Please,” she implored. “Don’t thank him. He is torn by what’s happened. He doesn’t know how to make amends and this is the only thing he could think of.”

  Amar stirred a little, and I waited for him to open his eyes, but he didn’t. He went back to sleep.

  “He sleeps most of the day. He wakes up once in a while . . .” I explained, my voice breaking.

  “Mamta, leave that alone.” Indu rushed to her daughter, who was trying rip a page out of a comic book.

  I smiled. Children did things like that. Children who had strength and who were healthy. Amar had done some of the naughty things children did, but he was usually too tired to do much. He had been active when he was two and then all of a sudden his health had deteriorated. It was like living on the edge of a sword; a small slip could result in a fatal wound.

  Indu and her children stayed a little longer and then left.

  When Sandeep arrived in the evening, I told him about their visit and he only nodded wearily. The long hours of the day and night were taking their toll on him, but like me he couldn’t sleep, even if he wanted to.

  “I called Harjot,” Sandeep said. “She is coming the day after tomorrow.”

  “You shouldn’t have asked her to come. She has a family and—”

  “I don’t think I could stop her,” Sandeep said. “I had to tell her about Amar and then she said she would be here.”

  “How long will she stay?”

  “She said as long as we need her.”

  Major Mohan came by three times a day and kept insisting that I was going to fall sick if I didn’t sleep a little and eat properly.

  But how could I eat or sleep when I was waiting for something to happen? Something I didn’t want.

  The next day Major Mohan took the respirator off and we waited again, holding our breath. Amar struggled a few times and then started to breathe erratically.

  “We will see how this works for eight hours,” Major Mohan said.

  I was tempted to ask, What happens after eight hours? Do they leave him to die, or do they put him back on the respirator? A part of me wanted him to live by any means possible, yet another part knew Amar would hate being bound to a machine.

  Prakash came the night Amar was taken off the respirator. He looked haggard, old, and tired. He had aged in a matter of days.

  He stood by the door of Amar’s room and talked to Sandeep for a while. I wondered irritably when those two had become such good friends.

  Prakash came inside the room and stood by Amar’s bed. He looked down at me as I sat on a chair on the other side of the bed holding Amar’s hand.

  “I spoke to Major Mohan,” he told me. “Can I do anything else?”

  I wanted to yell at him, but a man had to be given a second chance—even a man like Prakash.

  “You have done more than I could have asked for,” I said sincerely. “I want to thank you, but your wife said I shouldn’t.”

  I was never going to really forgive Prakash for leaving me in that railway station that night or for ruining our marriage, but I would try. Prakash, my ex-husband, had made the mistakes; Prakash, the man who stood by my son’s side, was trying his best to make amends.

  “That was a nice thing to say to Prakash,�
� Sandeep told me, when we kept vigil into the wee hours of the night. The nurse kept coming in to check Amar’s vital signs, keeping us awake.

  I could hear every breath he took because of the grating sound he made. But Major Mohan had assured us that Amar was in no pain and, for now, that was enough.

  “That was a very nice thing he did for Amar,” I said.

  Sandeep put his arm around me and rocked me slowly. We were sitting together in a large cane chair as we had every night, waiting for the inevitable, hoping for a miracle.

  How would we live after Amar? Would we ever be happy again? Would we always be sad?

  “It will all work out,” Sandeep said as if he could read my thoughts. “As long as you and I and god are together, we can do anything.”

  “Except save our son.”

  “God isn’t with us on this one,” he said.

  That night we fell asleep against each other, our dreams and nightmares colliding.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ANJALI

  Sandeep woke me up at five in the morning. Harjot’s train arrived at six and he had to go to the railway station.

  He kissed Amar on the forehead and looked at him for a long time. I knew each time he went away he was afraid that when he came back, Amar would be gone.

  I was afraid, too, because I couldn’t imagine how I would tell him that our son was no more.

  He kissed me on the mouth and told me to go back to sleep, even though he knew I wouldn’t.

  After Sandeep left, I opened a book of Yeats and started to recite Amar’s favorite poem. He loved “The Second Coming.” I had asked him if he even knew what it meant.

  “No,” he had said honestly. “But I like the words and I like it when you say ‘Spiritus Mundi.’ ”

  Amar’s eyes flickered open when I reached the Spiritus Mundi part, and I smiled.

  “I like that part,” he whispered.

  He opened his eyes wide and I thought, Maybe I should call the nurse so that she can give him more morphine.

  “Are you in pain? Do you want more painkillers?”

  He shook his head. “Too many tubes, Mummy.”

  “I know, beta, but it will—”

  “Can you take them off?”

  I didn’t know what to do. I stood up and looked around helplessly. I wanted to argue with him, but how could I?

  “I want to go outside, Mummy.”

  I wanted to cry out, “Wait, wait, my son, please wait. Just a minute more, an hour more, a lifetime more.”

  “Outside, beta?” I managed to say through the constriction in my throat.

  “I want some fresh air.”

  I didn’t hesitate. I carefully removed the IV needle from the back of his hand and separated the electrodes, which were counting the beats of his heart, from his chest. The machine made the insidious beeping that implied death. I ignored it and carried him. He was so frail, like he had been when he was a baby.

  I put him on the wheelchair, wiping my tears away because I didn’t want him to see me crying.

  I wheeled him through a small corridor and opened the door to a balcony. It was a cold morning so I put my shawl around him.

  “It is nice here,” he said, but his voice was weak.

  I sat down on a chair next to him and held his hand.

  He struggled to breathe, once, twice, three, four times, and then he stopped struggling.

  I held his limp hand in mine without looking at his face. I couldn’t see the rolling hills, the trees, or the garden glittering in the beauty of dawn. It was blinding, this moment. This unrecoverable, inescapable moment.

  I sat there for a long time holding my son’s hand.

  I stared into oblivion, my mind blank. No thought, no emotion surfaced as I sat numbly in the cold holding my baby’s hand.

  “Madam.” A nurse’s voice jolted me out of my present emptiness and launched me into yet another.

  “Madam?” she asked with concern.

  I smiled through the pain. “He wanted a breath of fresh air,” I said.

  A Breath of Fresh Air

  AMULYA MALLADI

  A Reader’s Guide

  A Conversation with Amulya Malladi

  Indu Sundaresan is the author of The Twentieth Wife and The Feast of Roses.

  Indu Sundaresan: I can remember 1984 as being a somewhat horrific year because of Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the Bhopal gas tragedy, both of which left the country reeling for a while. I don’t know that any other author has chosen to explore the Bhopal incident in the medium of fiction. Why did you? And why now, after so many years?

  Amulya Malladi: I believe that writers write about what haunts them. It’s the stories that keep us up at night we want to put down on paper. I am sure you understand, as it must’ve been a very strong passion for the Indian Mogul Period, Taj Mahal, and Noorjehan that propelled you to write not one, but two books about those times.

  For me the Bhopal gas tragedy is part of my life, my childhood, and its images stay with me even now, after so many years. I was nine years old when my father, an army officer, was posted to the 3 EME Center in Bhopal. Indira Gandhi was assassinated first and it started to dawn on me that people went to war over religion in the present times. I think I always assumed that it was something of the past, something for the history books.

  And before any of us could recover from the mayhem Indira Gandhi’s assassination brought, the Bhopal gas tragedy happened. Several victims found their way to the military hospital in the EME Center and we heard stories from army officers who were doctors and their children. I remember how everyone who had breathed in the methyl isocyanate gas described it as chili powder in their lungs. Those images stayed with me.

  So this became a story I wanted to tell but I had no idea how to. I didn’t want to write about the statistical millions, but the one, the few who were affected. I thought that would make the tragedy more real than saying “x” number died and “y” number survived.

  IS: Neither Anjali nor Sandeep was interested in joining the class-action suit against Union Carbide, despite the fact that Amar might possibly gain from it?

  AM: I always read out what I write everyday to my husband—he’s my sounding board—and I remember when I read this part out, he asked the same thing. We didn’t have children then but I wondered what I would do if my husband was the victim of something like this. I realized that my first instinct would be to be with him, to continue to be part of his life, whatever remained, and not chase after lawsuits. I think a part of their reluctance stems from how lawsuits are perceived in India. They are not orderly or coherent and cost a lot of money and time. I think both Anjali and Sandeep knew their first priority was to be with Amar, not waste time in becoming part of a lawsuit.

  IS: In the space of just one year, Anjali makes a huge transition from a silly teenager whose mind is filled with fanciful ideas of love and marriage into a woman with tremendous strength of character. At what point in the story does she gain the courage to walk away from the marriage and defy almost every tradition she has hitherto bowed to?

  AM: It is the cliché I guess, that you almost die and then you take stock of your life and change it. The same thing happens to Anjali. Until she becomes a survivor of the Bhopal gas tragedy, she’s not sure how to handle Prakash’s infidelity and their loveless marriage. But after she sees people die around her, she realizes that life is ephemeral and she could spend all of it trying to figure out how to handle Prakash or she could get out of the marriage and build a new life. In the end the decision is an easy, almost inevitable, one for her. She has always known that the marriage wasn’t working; it just takes some poisonous gas and a near-death experience for her to find the courage to get up and do something about her situation.

  IS: We see these two sides of Sandeep: the calm, self-possessed, confident and quiet man—the man Anjali sees; and then, when the narrative switches to his point of view, we see a Sandeep fraught with insecurities. Yet he does not volunteer his fear
s to his wife. I think of this fierce reluctance to reveal oneself, even to those beloved, as a very “Indian” cultural affliction (for lack of a better description).

  AM: Oh, you are absolutely right. Indians are very private; I am starting to realize that as I travel abroad and meet people from different cultures. We are very careful about who sees what about us. But part of it is also gender. Men, I believe, inherently carry the burden of being macho, and weeping on your wife’s pallu about your insecurities hardly fits the manly image.

  Sandeep, by and large, is more broad-minded than most Indian men of his generation, yet he has insecurities and even I was surprised to discover them. When I first started writing, only Anjali spoke; others were silent. Then all of a sudden, Sandeep started speaking, and then Prakash. I think if I hadn’t delved into their minds, I’d never have found out what they were feeling; they would never have willingly volunteered that information.

  IS: You know, it surprised me when Prakash came on the scene, but he took on this third dimension by speaking in his own voice, and that helped me see him as not just evil. Speaking of villains . . . Komal too is not a very attractive character. Did this keep her from remarrying? You say on page 95 that she was a “pariah in society.” Is this still true of modern Indian society? Are widows still treated as nonentities?

  AM: Things are different these days. Don’t you agree? My generation deals with divorce, widowhood, remarriage in a completely different light. I was talking to an old classmate about other old classmates and was shocked to know that two of the girls I went to high school with are now divorced. The India I left eight years ago appears to be different from the India today, at least for my generation.

  Now my mother and grandmother’s generation look at divorce and widowhood very differently. Anjali is more my mother’s generation than mine and so is Komal. But in Komal’s case I can’t help but feel that she is a pariah in society because she believes that is her fate, her destiny. I remember my grandmother, who I barely knew, always shaved her hair off as demanded by tradition of widows. I was quite young when I tried to convince her that maybe she didn’t have to do it anymore, and I realized that this was not about me and my convictions, it was about my grandmother’s belief that this was her duty, her obligation.