by Nikita Singh
She was sitting on her bed, with the framed canvas pulled close. The mattress on the bed was way more comfortable than her stiff painter's stool. Maybe she would get one of those cushy ones later, but right then, she was okay with sitting on the bed. She was avoiding all unnecessary expenses. She preferred getting a pram for her child than spending money on a stool she did not need.
She thought she heard her father's voice, and paused her paintbrush. She looked at the intercom. It was silent. She continued her work. It was only after she heard his voice from closer by that she realized that he really was calling her. He must not be in his room; she would have heard him over the intercom otherwise. She called out to let him know she was coming. She pushed her canvas frame away from the bed and got up slowly. Her back hurt from all the weight she was carrying in her tummy. She put a hand there for support, stood up and walked out of her room.
'Dad? Where are you?' she called.
'Shambhavi?'
'Yes, Dad. Why are you out of your bedroom?'
'I came out for a stroll. Now come here and help me out of this...' Mr Sen said. He sounded panicked.
Shambhavi rushed towards him, following his voice to the top of the basement staircase. 'What are you doing here?' she asked, out of breath.
'I came to find you. But I got trapped in this staircase,' he explained.
'First, I no longer paint in the basement. And second, you are never supposed to bring your wheelchair near staircases. It's dangerous. How can you act so reckless?'
She saw that one of the wheels of his wheelchair was stuck in the broken wood at the top of the stairs. His wheelchair was facing the stairs and he had his back towards her. 'Stop! Don't do anything. Let me help you out of the chair and take you to your room. I'll get the chair later.' It would be tricky to get him out of the chair, but it was their best option. The wheelchair was bent dangerously downwards.
'There's no need. Just pull a little towards yourself, it'll come free.'
'NO!'
Before Shambhavi could stop him, he put his feet down and started pushing backwards. After the first push, his foot lost balance and he fell forwards, facedown towards the stairs.
'DAD!' Shambhavi panicked and left her hold on the back of the wheelchair and rushed towards her father. In the terror she felt, her foot got caught in one of the wheels of the chair and she was thrown forward too.
'AARGHHHH,' she yelled when her stomach hit the wheelchair.
'SHAMBHAVI,' she heard her father call out.
She tried to hold the chair for balance, but her bump had pulled it free of the stair and it rolled down the stairs, pulling Shambhavi with it.
'NOOOOO,' she shouted. The scene unfolded in front of her in all its horrifying pieces. Everything was happening way too quickly to make any sense.
'AAARRGGHHHHH; her father shouted out. He was in pain; she had to do something about it.
But she could not; she herself was in free fall. She saw her body falling down, right behind the wheelchair. She tried to halt her fall by clutching at something, but the staircase had no raised edge, or boundary of any kind.
Her father was lying at the bottom of the staircase. She could see blood, but did not know where it was coming from. All she concentrated on was stopping the wheelchair and her own body from falling over her father. She held tightly onto the wheelchair, managing to change its direction.
She did it. The wheelchair did not roll over onto her father and neither did she. Instead, they fell sideways, from the middle of the staircase, from a height of five feet, to the floor. By some miracle, she did not fall on the wheelchair, else she would have died on the spot. It had all happened in a matter of seconds.
'SHAMBHAVI? SHAMBHAVI? SHAMBHAVI!' her father's voice broke through her semi-consciousness.
She opened her eyes. He was lying on his stomach face down on the floor, a few feet away from her, clearly unable to get up.
'Dad ... Dad ...' she managed to murmur.
'GET UP. GET UP, SHAMBHAVI,' her father shouted. It seemed like he was in unbearable suffering. But he did not care about himself. Just her.
'Dad ...'
'Call the doctor ...'
'Dad...' Shambhavi cried again, unable to move a muscle.
'The ... doctor ... Shambhavi ... the baby ...'
He kept saying things, but she could not make any sense of it. She heard his voice, through a dense cloud of pain surrounding her. She attempted to open her eyes, but her eyelids kept dropping. She struggled not to get unconscious; her dad's voice kept her from drifting off. But she could not muster strength to speak. She kept groaning, till her father's voice slowly drowned and eventually stopped.
It was only when the silence hurt her ears that she opened her eyes wide, despite the involuntary tears overflowing them.
'Dad ...?'
There was no response.
'Dad? Dad ...?'
There was no response again.
She strived to get up, but could not. She looked at her dad, who was lying lifeless, a few feet away from her. She strained to crawl towards him, but none of her limbs responded. The agony was blinding. She barely managed to fish her cell phone out of her maternity top. She dialled the last dialled number.
'Hello?' Dr Mishra answered cheerfully after two rings.
'Doctor ...' Shambhavi could not speak. The ache was too much to take. She could not even pinpoint the source of the pain; it hurt so much, everywhere.
'Shambhavi? Hello?'
'Doctor ... the basement...'
'What are you saying, Shambhavi? Where are you? Are you okay?' Dr Mishra asked in alarm.
'My dad ... my baby...'
That was all she could say before she saw the pool of blood she was lying in and fainted. She thought of her father, she thought of Arjun, she thought of her baby, before her eyes closed.
Smiling for the world, living despite grief, bouncing back every time life tries to pull one down-if only it were as easily done as said. The most painful is to see those give up, who had never let anything pull them down before, no matter what they are faced with.
Sometimes, for finding the sunlight, we need to go through the densest and darkest of the forests. Sometimes, we seek sunshine, not for ourselves, but only for the ones we love.
Running away from our responsibilities only makes it more difficult to handle when we eventually decide to come back.
do not want to listen to anything you have to say. Why is that so difficult to understand?' Arjun thundered over phone. It was not the first time Faisal had called him to talk about Shambhavi. He regretted his decision of letting him know where he was going and how to contact him. But he had thought that if he had to disappear, at least his assistant needed to know where he was, in case there was an emergency at work.
His regret began from the very first call he received from Faisal, telling him there was something urgent he needed to know about Shambhavi-the woman he was trying so hard to forget.
He had told Faisal that he did not want to know anything at all and hung up. Since then, Faisal had called twice. It was really infuriating and he was about to lose his lid.
'But sir, this is important. I assure you it is,' he tried again desperately.
'It sure must be. But I just want to be left alone. Could you not just give me a little peace?' he said, teeth clenched in fury.
'Sure, sir. But first you need to listen to -'
'I DO NOT WANT TO. I've told you this a zillion times, and I am not about to tell you again. One more time you call me for this, and you are fired.'
'Then fired I will get, happily. BUT YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO ME,' Faisal suddenly shouted. It made Arjun pause. It was the first time he had heard Faisal raise his voice with him. 'I cannot let this happen, when I can see it in front of my eyeshow unfair this is. You might think that we, your employees, are blind, but we really are not. We see things and we hear things.'
'What is that supposed to mean?'
'That means that I have he
ard from the older employees what happened between you and that girl-Prehal. And then I saw what happened between you and Shambhavi.'
'How does any of this concern you? Do you realize how close you are to getting fired?' Arjun snapped angrily.
'I am considering myself fired already. So I have nothing to lose. Just listen-you remember the cheque you had me hand over to her? I gave it to her, but Shambhavi never took the money. That is what I have been trying to tell you all along.'
'What bullshit? I have the document with her signature on it, which says she received the cheque. I know she got it.'
'Yes, she took the cheque from me and she signed the documents along with The Green Meadow invoice,' Faisal tried to explain desperately. 'But she never cashed it. I found out last week, while going through the company's expenses, and called you to ask what I should do, but you didn't listen to me.'
Arjun was no longer listening to him even then. A thought took birth in his brain. Shambhavi.
All this while, he had thought that she had accepted his cheque, just as he had expected. But it turned out that she had never taken his money. And she had never tried to contact him either. That meant she was not after his wealth, after all. He felt strangely elated. As if a heavy burden had been lifted off his shoulder. He was seeing Shambhavi in a new light. She was not the woman he had accused her of being. She was different. She had loved him truly with no pretence and definitely not for money.
And then he was hit by the horrible things he had said to her before leaving her, abandoning her, with a child on the way
It had been-he mentally calculated-over four months. That meant that their baby was in the seventh month. Thirty weeks, he estimated, from the day the baby was conceived- 5th January 2011. The thought took him back to the time he had asked Shambhavi who the father of her unborn child was.
He felt terrible. He had accused her of horrible things and had abandoned her at a time she needed him the most. He cursed himself over and over again for being so blind ... for not recognizing love when it stared him in the face. Maybe it was too late to go back ...
Maybe she would not want to see him. It would be justified. He did not deserve to be allowed within twenty feet of her, but he had to try. He had to go back to her and try to explain to her about what had made him do what he did. He would try to tell her that, and then he would accept whatever decision she took.
'Sir? Are you there? Hello?' Faisal's voice pierced through his thought-cloud.
'Yes, yes, I am listening,' Arjun lied.
'I was saying-I could not let you continue doing this. I had to tell you. I am sorry for being so out of line. But you have to understand that I could not live with knowing so much and doing nothing about it.'
'It's okay, Faisal. I am grateful to you for forcing it on me,' Arjun said. He added thoughtfully, 'Actually, do you have any idea where I might find Shambhavi?'
'Yes, I do. They are at Aurobindo Hopsital.'
'What? Why?'
'Weren't you listening? There has been an accident. That is why I had to make a last-ditch effort to inform you, even though you told me you didn't want to hear a word about Shambhavi,' Faisal said.
'What the ... What kind of accident? What are you talking about?' Arjun freaked out instantaneously.
'She fell from the stairs last night. Apparently, she was trying to save her father. Her father did not make it; passed away on the way to the hospital ...'
'And Shambhavi? The baby?'
'I do not know much, the doctors aren't telling yet. Tutul told me about it just this morning and I called you immediately, hoping you would listen to me for once,' Faisal explained.
'But they are ... they are ... alive, aren't they?'
'Yes, critical, both of them, but alive.'
'Oh, thank God,' Arjun exhaled. 'How critical?'
'Very critical. She was in the seventh month of her pregnancy. They fell from a height, so the impact was hard. And I don't think whether I should say this or not, but Tutul said that a baby delivered in its seventh month rarely survives.'
Arjun stopped listening at that point. His brain was numb; his mind frozen. He could not believe all of this was happening. To think that such horrific things had happened to Shambhavi ... and their baby ... and he had been too late. He had never given her a chance to explain; now he might never get a chance to explain.
He had run away from his responsibility and abandoned her to die. She might actually do that. He felt short of breath, as he tried desperately to gather his thoughts together. Worrying about the future was pointless. He needed to do something about the present. He needed to get to the hospital she was in and be of any kind of help he could provide. He knew she would not want to talk to him, if and when she gained consciousness. She would want him out of his life, because he was an animal. He had not thought of her even once. He had not stopped to think what she must have been going through before pushing her out of his life. Not once had he thought about her and their baby, and how they were doing without him.
His biggest regret was not being there with her to prevent the fall. He should have been there to take care of her, since she was pregnant, and he was the father of the child. He should have been there every step along the way and pampered her silly. She should not have needed to do anything on her own. She should not have needed to go near the stairs at all. He should have been there to do everything for her.
But he had not been.
He rushed out of his personal hellhole-the underground cabin beneath the factory, where he had been hiding since the last four months -and rushed towards the hospital they were admitted in. He asked about her at the reception and reached the floor she was being operated in. As soon as he got out of the elevator, he saw Tutul -and one other girl who he assumed was Mili-there. They did not spare him a second glance. He did not mind. He did not need second glances. All he needed was to find Shambhavi and take care of her. To tell her what a terrible mistake he had made and how miserable he was, knowing what had happened behind his back. He wanted to apologize for being absent, in the most crucial time of her life.
He had expected her to be lying unconscious in the hospital bed, too hurt to move. But he was in for a surprise. She was up and walking. As he made his way to the ward the receptionist had directed him to, he saw her coming out of it.
He would never be able to erase the image from his head.
Shambhavi, dressed in the light green hospital gown which reached her knees, rushing out of the ward. She looked frail underneath the gown, her bones were sticking out. It seemed like she had lost a lot of weight since he had last seen her. Wasn't it supposed to be the other way round, during pregnancy? Her stomach looked caved in, where the baby should have been. She had bandages covering a lot of herher forehead, right arm and right leg. There were little wounds all over her body, dressed up with gauze. Her right arm was in a cast.
There was no muscle on her body-just skin on bones. Her eyes looked sunk in, her cheeks were hollow. There was no twinkle in those once-bright eyes. Instead, they were surrounded by dark circles. Her skin was an unhealthy shade of yellow, very pale. But the fire inside her was still burningshe was shouting at the hospital attendants, forcing them to let her go.
'DON'T TOUCH ME. Stay away. AWAY,' she yelled, as one of the nurses tried to take her back to the ward.
Mili and Tutul got up and ran towards Shambhavi. Arjun stood where he was. Frozen.
'Shambhavi ...' Mili said. 'Relax. Come back to bed. You need to rest ...'
'I will NOT rest. My child needs me; Pari needs me. I have to GO,' Shambhavi shrieked again.
'But you are in no condition to be out of bed. Please come back,' Mili pleaded and Tutul held Shambhavi from the other side.
'LET ME GO. STOP IT. DON'T YOU SEE? MY BABY NEEDS ME.'
'You cannot do anything to help her. The doctors are trying their best ... Tutul said.
'You don't understand ... I need to be with her ... Pari ...'
Mili nodd
ed, tears overflowing her eyes as she hugged Shambhavi tight. 'I understand ...'
'You don't ... she's my only family ...'
'We're here with you, Shambhavi ... please don't be like this ... Tutul said, also crying.
'Tutul ... Please let me go to my baby ... I want to see her ... She is ... dying ...' Shambhavi started sobbing. 'She's dying. Just like Dad. I want to die too. There is nothing left to live for...'
'Nothing is going to happen to her ... she will be okay...'
'You don't know that. You're just saying that to fool me. But you cannot fool me ... I am not a child. I have seen a lot more of the world, than you give me credit for. I know she is not going to be okay ... and I know I am never going to be okay...'
'Don't say that. Shambhavi, you have to be positive about this,' Mili tried to explain.
'I would have-had there been anything remotely positive about this whole situation ...' that was all Shambhavi said, before she broke down into tears again and her knees gave out. Mili and Tutul held her up and tried to guide her back to the ward, supporting her. But she was still not letting them.
'My baby ... Pari ...' Shambhavi kept repeating the same, begging her friends to not take her back to the ward. She looked helpless. By the way her teeth were clenched and she held herself up awkwardly, it was clear that she was in a lot of suffering. But she was not complaining about that. All she cared about was her baby. She joined her hands in plea and cried, 'Please let me go to her ... Please ... I know she does not have long to live ... I know she is going to ... leave me. I just want to see her, hold her close to me ... Please don't take this away from me...'
'Shambhavi, no. Pari is going to be okay ...' Tutul said, trying to be strong, but her tears kept flowing endlessly. Her body shook, as she sniffed, not looking at Shambhavi's face. It seemed like she was struggling to be strong outside, when she was breaking inside.