by Nikita Singh
Preeti feels a sob rise in her chest. She lets it out. She allows herself a moment to wallow in the injustice of her life having been cut short. She was getting pushed off the train, even though the station she had planned to disembark on was miles away. The train will keep moving forward, carrying everyone she loves, without her.
Eventually, she sniffs, wipes her face and pulls off the covers. She slides in.
Sher stands at the foot of the bed and watches, tears trickling down his face, getting trapped in his big, grey moustache. The trembling of his brows as he tries and fails to contain the emotions bubbling inside him trigger a wave of sorrow in Preeti. He’s wearing a white kurta pyjama. He looks just as handsome as he did all those years ago, when Preeti celebrated her first Holi with her new husband. She lets the tears travel down her face unchecked.
‘Shera,’ she breathes. Another private nickname, the oldest one. Preeti holds up two small plastic bottles of what she refers to as “cocktails” to Sher – filled with exactly the mix of ingredients they each need for their hearts to stop beating. She pats his side of the bed, inviting him.
He follows her lead. Slides under the covers, turns towards her and cradles her head in the crevice of his arm. She can hear his heart beat manically in his chest.
The decision to die together isn’t one they had taken lightly, or recently. Preeti’s parents had fought together for India’s freedom. They had met very young, revolted against the British together, and tied the knot after India reclaimed her Independence. They had endured sixteen heartbreaking years of miscarriages and crushed hopes before they had Preeti. Her parents were in their late-thirties then, and had already lived through more tragedies than many people face in their lifetime. Preeti was in her early twenties when her father passed away of a cardiac arrest. Her mother aged ten years overnight. She aged thirty more years in the three years she lived after her husband’s passing. She was present at Preeti’s wedding and the birth of her first grandchild. She passed soon after, of an accumulation of accelerated natural causes. She simply didn’t know how to be without her husband. They were halves of a whole. Without him, she could exist, but never be happy. She died of heartbreak.
Soon after her death, Sher moved Preeti and Ratan to London. Sher had already been living and working there for two years by then. His responsibility was to earn money and send it home to his family, while hers was to care for her dying mother. When her mother passed, Preeti had arrived in London, crumpled and raw, and told Sher earnestly that if something were to happen to him, she wouldn’t survive it. Then, seeing how Preeti’s mother suffered, the pain she had been in ever since her husband died, Sher had told Preeti that he couldn’t survive her loss either. That’s when they had promised that they would die together.
Over the following year, they had discussed the logistics. Ratan would need a sibling. Both children would need to have grown up, moved out and on their feet. Once those non-negotiable requirements were fulfilled, if anything happened to either of them, the other would leave too. They would go together. Neither could live with the image of the other person suffering their loss. It’s easier for those who die. Death affects those who live.
Preeti speaks slowly. ‘You have given me everything I ever needed in my time on this planet. I love you, and our family, with everything I have. I know you think I’m eager to leave. I’m really not. My body is failing me. It’s my time, Shera. This is how it ends, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.’
‘I love you, Preet,’ Sher says in his brave, broken voice.
‘Thank you for keeping your promise. I asked everything of you, and you gave it to me. You gave me a forever.’ Preeti sobs into Sher’s chest, breathing in his scent. Her fingers run over his body, basking in his warmth and familiarity.
‘Together forever,’ he murmurs into her hair.
‘Together forever,’ Preeti repeats their promise.
They lie there for a while. Exactly how long, neither of them knows. When they’re ready, they sit up. Preeti hands Sher a red bottle, containing a small, round red tablet and a large white one. She unscrews the blue bottle, containing an assortment of four tablets and capsules. She transfers all four of them into her palm, reaches for the bottle of water on the nightstand and looks at Sher. He’s in the ready position too, just like her.
They kiss. They pull away. She looks her husband in the eyes, swallows her cocktail. She slips back under the covers, adjusts herself on the pillow and waits. A moment later, Sher takes position next to her.
Their book ends here. She murmurs to him, sweetly, softly. Whispers loving memories into his ears, till she can’t anymore. She feels at peace. Her heart slows down. The blood in her veins relax; they’re not in a rush anymore. She is prepared for this. This is exactly the way she planned it. Peaceful, quiet, in her husband’s arms.
This is the way for her.
Preeti slips back into consciousness at the sound of his words.
‘Mmm?’ she manages to groan.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sher’s voice reaches her as though from the other side of a door. It grows clearer. ‘I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t take my cocktail. I’m sorry.’
She hears him, loud and clear. Her heart races one last time.
‘I’m sorry … I’m so sorry …’
Before she can retaliate in any way, she is gone, not in the way she’d planned it.
Sher sits up in bed. He is stunned. He watches the limp body of his wife. Her eyes are hollow, looking up at the ceiling. He feels too weak to shut her frozen eyelids. Too weak to even look at her.
He turns away, looks at the two tablets, still in the bottle, his bottle. He doesn’t know what they are. Preeti had done the research, told him to trust her. Their bodies were different, needed different things to live, different things to die. He had left the job of finding the perfect cocktail to end his life to her.
For a moment, he feels a sudden compulsion to take his cocktail now, leave with her after all. Then, he hardens himself. This isn’t betrayal. Her time was up, his isn’t. He couldn’t have told her that and broken their promise. He would’ve made her last days on earth miserable. And he knew she wouldn’t change her mind. For as long as he’d known her, she had held this promise close to her heart. It had meant so much to her. It wasn’t only important, it was non-negotiable.
So, he had decided to let her go quietly. Grant half of her wish. This isn’t betrayal. Anyone would tell you that it’s completely unreasonable to expect someone else to die with you just because you were cursed with a terminal disease that will eventually kill you.
Watching her go, however, he hadn’t been able to keep the truth from her any longer. In a moment of weakness, he’d revealed his betrayal. This isn’t betrayal. Then why did it feel so much like it?
Eventually, he does gather enough courage to look at her, shut her eyelids. Eventually, he does call his sons, the ambulance. After he had apologized to his wife’s dead body a hundred more times.
This isn’t fair to him. He should’ve had the liberty to grieve his wife without feeling like a fraud. She took that from him. Now, he doesn’t know what to think, what to do with his life.
In the days and weeks that follow, Sher finds a way to cope the only way he can: by not thinking about Preeti’s death. He plays pretend with himself. Not in a delusional way, but in a forced, only-way-to-survive way. He convinces himself that she is away, visiting a friend. That she will return someday soon.
While she is gone, he focuses on all the things her presence limited in his life. He goes home, to his village. He stays up all night with his friends, whom Preeti had considered a bit uncouth. Spending nights around a bonfire, talking noisily about the memories of their horseplay in their childhood, Sher feels a sense of triumph.
A month later, when he returns to their home in London, that feeling dictates his mindset. He revels in his new-found freedom. There was a lot he couldn’t do because she disliked it or was simply uninterested. He focuses on th
ose things. He never goes on the morning jogs Preeti forced on him. He orders food she didn’t like, watches movies she wasn’t a fan of, listens to old Punjabi folk music on speakers throughout the house. He buys more underwear to put off doing laundry longer; he buys the plants she was allergic to; he throws all the cushions on the floor to make more room on the couch and leaves the curtains drawn all day. He tells himself that it’s not because he wants to hide from the world. It’s because he’s finally comfortable in his own home.
He doesn’t pay heed to her absence, or the things she left behind. On the day he returned from India, he had brought out a pillow and a blanket from the guest room to the living room, where he sleeps on the couch every night.
Time passes slowly. Days blend into each other, with nothing to tell them apart. He doesn’t venture into the bedroom. He knows that there are letters waiting for their sons, in the closet next to their clothes. Preeti had taken some time to meticulously collect their personal belongings from all around the house and pile them together in a corner in their bedroom. She didn’t want to leave that job to their sons. She had donated whatever could be donated, piled up the rest in their bedroom, leaving behind only furniture and furnishings in the rest of the house. The house felt like a bed and breakfast. Warm and comfortable, but lacking in personal effects: photographs, memorabilia from their travels, small things of sentimental value to them but useless junk to strangers, clothes, jewellery and such.
Two months after his wife took her life, Sher still hasn’t gone into their bedroom.
Three months since the day Preeti took her cocktail and he didn’t take his, Sher still finds himself carrying the small plastic bottle with him, for reasons unknown to him.
Sher doesn’t want to spend the day alone. Ratan and Angela are only too glad to have him babysit Leo while they spend the day looking at bigger apartments in preparation for the new baby. Sher appreciates Leo’s bright and energetic company. His grandson occupies his mind, his giggles bring joy to Sher’s heart. At times, Sher laughs so hard, tears threaten to emerge from where he has hidden them.
Things change so suddenly, so drastically, that it knocks the breath out of Sher’s body. Leo is on the floor. His small body is convulsing.
For one panic-stricken moment, Sher is petrified. Frozen to the spot, unable to move, do anything but watch his grandson tremble violently. It takes everything Sher has in him to move. With superhuman energy, he rushes to find a phone, dials 999. Cradling the mobile phone between his shoulder and ear, he runs back to Leo, drops to the floor on his knees and lifts his grandson in his arms. He gives the operator clear, concise instructions. Once he’s assured that the ambulance has been dispatched, Sher hangs up the call and stands up, carrying Leo with him. The boy doesn’t cry. His body shakes and shivers, but Leo is missing. His body feels like a shell.
‘It’s okay, it’s okay, shh. You’re okay, you’re okay,’ Sher chants like a prayer.
Leo’s body is burning. His little face is inflamed. The spittle on the corners of his lips terrifies Sher. He sits Leo down again and helps him throw up. He pats his back first and then rubs it frantically.
‘No, no, no, Leo, please, no,’ he begs and pleads his grandson to be okay. ‘What did you do? What did you do?’
The ambulance arrives within minutes. They don’t waste any time collecting Leo and securing him in.
‘Are you coming, sir?’ the paramedic asks Sher, who is frozen again now that someone else has the reins. He’s jolted into action. He nods and climbs into the ambulance. Someone shuts the doors. Someone else drives them away. Time flies by.
The paramedics say things Sher can’t grasp. He crouches next to Leo, brushes his damp hair away from his forehead, whispers assurances that everything will be okay. He doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know anything. What was in the cocktail Preeti had customized for him? Would it have the same effects on Leo that it would’ve had on Sher? Why did Sher carry the deadly cocktail with him? How did Leo’s little arms reach the inside pockets of Sher’s jacket, which he had hung on the coat rack? Had it fallen to the floor? Why did Sher look away, even for one second? If something bad happened, would Ratan and Angela survive it? Would their marriage survive? Would Ratan ever be okay, after losing his mother and son so close together? A hundred questions swirl in Sher’s mind. He doesn’t have any answers.
They arrive at the hospital. Leo is carried away. Sher runs behind him till he is stopped. He calls Ratan. He paces the waiting room. His entire body is dry. There’s nothing left there. It’s like there’s no blood flowing in his veins, like he has no tears left. His mouth feels like sandpaper. He looks up to see Ratan and Angela approach. He sees them see him. He can’t hold the pieces of himself together anymore. He turns away. He starts walking. He keeps walking.
Sher falls to the floor. He’s in the bedroom. He’s furious with Preeti.
‘What did you do? What the hell did you do?’ he screams in agony.
In the dark, cold bedroom, he rifles through the boxes, searching for something to hold on to, something to stop his free fall. He looks around himself. He wants to rip the hair off his head, gouge his eyes out of their sockets. He has forgotten his jacket at Ratan’s house, and yet, his body is hot. He’s sweating through his shirt, and yet, the tips of his fingers are freezing as he digs through Preeti’s belongings.
He finds the stack of letters. There are three sets. One set of about a dozen letters is gathered and held together by a rubber band. It’s addressed to Ratan. A second set is addressed to Ronnie. There’s a third set. For Angela? He didn’t realize that Preeti was that close to Angela. No. It’s not addressed to Angela. It’s addressed to him.
My Dear Shera, My Love, the bundle reads, in Preeti’s handwriting.
With trembling fingers, Sher peels open the first letter. His first few attempts to read end in failure. He blinks rapidly, shakes his head, as if to force it to operate correctly. He tries again.
I know this is confusing. It wasn’t easy for me either.
I knew the part after I take my cocktail and die would be the hardest for you, since your cocktail was just a ferrous sulphate and a Vitamin C tablet. Iron and vitamin supplements, that’s all. So, you must have had to watch me go. That could not have been easy.
Sher’s phone rings, and he starts. He picks up the call, without meaning to. He doesn’t say anything. His voice doesn’t work.
‘Papa, everything’s okay! Leo is okay! It’s a peanut allergy. We didn’t know about it. The doctor said your fast response saved his life. He said that – Papa? Are you there?’
The phone slips from Sher’s hand, on to the floor. His body follows. He curls up with his dead wife’s letters. Relief rushes through his veins, for Leo. Misery, for Preeti. He betrayed her. She didn’t betray him.
He reads on.
I’m sorry, Shera, but I didn’t have any other choice. I couldn’t have told you that it was my time, but not yours. You would never have let me go. And I didn’t want to let you die either. You have reasons to live. Our children, Leo, your job, your friends, your book club, a second grandchild on the way.
We had a full lifetime together. My chapter needed to end. But you still have so much more steam. I couldn’t let you give that away. You have so much more life left in you. Thirty more years, easily. Probably even forty or fifty, if you’re really good with food and keep up the morning jogs.
He can’t read anymore. For the first time since she left, Sher lets himself think about her. The real her, not the version he had conjured up in his head as a coping mechanism, highlighting her small flaws and quirks to villainize her. It had been easier that way. But he doesn’t have that comfort anymore. He can’t hide behind his constructed hatred.
He feels the grief of losing her. Really feels it.
He betrayed her trust. Not only that, he didn’t trust her either. He let her die with the knowledge of his betrayal. He was finally shaken out of his insulated blanket, his false sense of security tod
ay, when he thought Leo was dying because of him, because of her. When, all along, she had been looking out for him.
He clutches her letters to his heart. Would he ever be strong enough to read them?
He has to grant Preeti her wishes. He has to live the life she had saved for him. His punishment is to live that life, but without her. His life partner, his secret-keeper, his companion.
He spends a long time on the floor like that. He thinks about her, about what he has done. When he can’t contain anymore thoughts, he falls back to reliving memories. There, he finds pain. There, he finds solace.
They had made enough memories to last him the rest of his life. He talks to her. He feels her presence around him. He asks her what she thinks about what he did.
He can picture her vividly. She chuckles. Says, ‘You bad, bad man! You backstabber, you!’ She laughs some more. Then she adds, begrudgingly, ‘I must admit that I’m quite impressed with you. Didn’t think you had it in you to do something so bad. All this time, I thought you were a good boy.’
He can almost see her wink. He clings to it. Clings to her memories. He follows her wish. He goes on, with some help from her letters.
Sellout
In a matter of minutes, Parul’s day had spiralled wildly out of control. The family’s carefully structured routine had failed to bring the organization to their schedules that Parul, her husband and their two daughters relied on. It looked like it was up to Parul to fix it.