It happens for a reason, p.1
It Happens For a Reason, page 1
For Satish, Atul and Purvi, without whom
I am only one-fourth, not whole
And for Anukul who makes me think
Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom most constantly?
– Emily Brontë
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its colour.
– W.S. Merwin
CONTENTS
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
What Came Later
A Note from the Author
Acknowledgements
About the Book
About the Author
Copyright
PROLOGUE
There are many ways in which your life changes. Sometimes, these changes happen slowly. Like a sapling growing. You notice that a seed has sprouted but you don’t pay much attention to it. Suddenly, before you realise it, it is a little plant, firmly rooted, with leaves, stems, buds, and it grows, slowly but steadily, changing every single day, with small, seemingly imperceptible changes, which later all measure up, add and contribute to it.
Sometimes it happens overnight. Like a phone call, after which you can never go back to what was before.
But it is rare that both these changes happen together. In my case, they haven’t exactly occurred at the same time, but they have happened one after the other. I usually do not think much about it, and I am not one to philosophise, but for the past day and a half, lying in this hospital bed, I have had plenty of time to think.
The hospital is as unfriendly a place as can be, with its stark rooms, antiseptic smell and the Spartan pieces of functional furniture—just what is essential and nothing more—do not help. Dr Shylaja, a spinster at sixty-four, attired in starched cotton sarees as stiff as her unsympathetic heart, runs the hospital with the precision of a military sergeant. She is extremely good at her job, and one of the best in the country. Which is why my parents thought it would be a good idea to get me admitted under her care. Whatever it is, I am here now. And it feels like a nightmare.
Except, it is no dream. The IV drip is real. So is the little rubber tube that goes into my right nostril.
‘It is for the oxygen, so that the oxygen levels do not fall. It might be a little uncomfortable but you will be okay soon,’ a smiling nurse says in her heavily-accented English that screams she is from Kerala, as she adjusts the tube in my nose.
The intravenous drip attached to my left arm hurts a bit, but when the nurse asks if it’s too painful, I shake my head. I have been admitted here since last morning. Dr Shylaja has visited twice. There are nurses walking in and out, writing down all sorts of things and every now and then checking if I have ‘dilated enough’. They also keep checking my temperature, my blood pressure and assure me that I am ‘doing fine’.
How can my life have changed so drastically in less than a year? Yet it has, and it is a choice that I made. Ten months ago, I was on the cover of Glamour, which is no mean achievement. And even though my parents never approved of my modelling career, I know my mother boasts about it to the ladies in her circle. Privately they have ticked me off, castigated me, tried to knock some sense into me (in their words) and tried to make me use my intelligence, instead of my body. But I don’t see anything wrong in what I did. My mother has never been around for me. Nor has my dad.
Agreed, they have given me every single thing that money can buy. There is nothing I have lacked, including an expensive boarding school education. But I don’t think my parents care for me. The only time I got a chance to see them was during the two months of summer vacation, which I hated. Dad was always travelling, and for my mother, I was just a minor inconvenience that got in the way of her very hectic social life. Once, when I was seven, I had walked into my parents’ bedroom and climbed into the bed between them. My mother had woken up and screamed at me and told me to go back to my own room. I had pretended to, but I was just outside the door when I heard hushed whispers, and the male voice was not my dad’s.
‘Damn—do you think she realised?’ he had asked.
‘I don’t think so, but I think you better leave,’ said my mom.
A few months after that, I was sent to a boarding school which was where I celebrated my eighth birthday.
Being popular in school, I was always invited by one friend or the other to spend the summer holidays with them. It was always Suchi’s house I chose. Somehow I never wanted to spend time at home and it suited my mother just fine.
Suchi, with her loving, large family of three older brothers, a mother who was affectionate, and most importantly, parents who loved each other, and had time for their children—it was everything that I craved for but didn’t have.
I wish she were here with me now, instead of in the US, where she is doing her Bachelor’s. While in school, the grand plan was that we would both study together. But life has a way of foiling promises made when you are twelve, no matter how sincerely and earnestly they were made.
Had Suchi been here, she would have understood. Unlike my parents who never could figure out why I needed to have a career in modelling when they could give me all the money in the world. There is something that is unexplainable, which no amount of money can buy. It is a feeling, a bond, a deep connection with something larger than oneself—heck, I can’t even begin to explain all this to my parents. Besides, I don’t think they will have the time, even if I want to try.
Now, lying in the hospital bed, I think that never in my life have I felt this helpless, this out of control, this dependent, this scared. I wonder what the hell I have let myself in for. But I can’t turn back the clock now. This is my decision and I am sticking to it, no matter what.
Dr Shylaja walks in again and asks the nurse to get the CTG machine. She does not bother to explain to me what it is, or why she is using it. She never says a single word more than is necessary to a patient. Any question is met with a frown or a nod of the head. The nurse applies a gel to my tummy and then places an elastic belt around it. It has two round plates, about the size of a tennis ball, and it feels cold as it makes contact with my skin. I wince. To distract myself I turn to the machine and try not to look at Dr Shylaja’s face. The machine starts printing out what I presume to be heartbeats on something that looks like graph paper, the kind we used in math class, but this one is way longer and smoother.
Dr Shylaja studies it, and then tells the nurse, ‘She will need prostaglandin. Start it. Call me when dilation is six.’ Then she walks out without a word to me. As though I don’t exist. Most of the time I don’t care, but this time I want to yell at her, ask her if she has a heart. Can’t she see I am worried, scared, but trying to put up a brave front?
I wish I had someone here with me, to reassure me that things are going to be okay. Now I wish I had told Manav to come. I know he would have, had I asked him. But I didn’t want to.
The nurse performs a vaginal examination. I hate it.
‘Hurting?’ she asks kindly.
It doesn’t hurt. But it kind of humiliates. I don’t think she will understand that though.
‘I will be putting catheter. This is for gel,’ she says, and then I can feel something being inserted into my vagina, and that is when I start crying.
Soundlessly.
I don’t think the nurse realises though. She leaves the catheter there and assures me that everything is going to be okay.
I am so exhausted that I don’t care anymore. I lie on the hard, steel bed, in the hospital gown, my legs spread out, with a tube down there going inside my body, a tube inside my nose and an IV drip in my arm. More than the pain, it is how helpless I feel in the situation I am in, which gets to me. I just want this to be over as quickly as possible.
And after about six hours of this, it starts. The tearing pains. I am barely aware of what is happening anymore. This pain is nothing like I have ever experienced before. I feel like I am going to die. It comes in waves. Barely does one wave of pain subside, than a fresh one hits me.
I try not to scream, but it is hard. I can vaguely hear the nurses running, asking for Dr Shylaja.
She arrives. By now I am sweating profusely. It comes again and I scrunch my face in agony and dig my fingernails into my palm.
‘You have to push. Push hard or else I will have to cut you up,’ she says.
That does it. After all of this, I cannot bear the thought of going under a knife.
I push strenuously with all my might, and then abruptly, it is over.
I lie back in relief, exhausted, and out of the corner of my eye, I can see the doctor holding up my baby. And even before the doctor says anything, I know it is a boy.
My son. He is beauti
I am too stunned to do anything but stare in a daze.
I have just given birth to a baby boy. I cannot believe it. I am no longer a girl now. I am a mother.
This is my very own baby.
I weep, half in relief, half in joy.
The baby is placed on my chest and amazingly starts to suckle. I am shocked at how instinctively and naturally the baby is doing this, and how comfortable I feel.
They take him away to be cleaned, and after I am cleaned up as well, I am told to lie down with my legs close together, one on top of the other. After spending the last many hours with my legs wide apart, this feels odd. I am told that the hospital has a policy of bringing the baby to the mother only during feed times, so that she gets complete rest and time to recover.
The nurse asks me to call her if I need anything.
I nod. Out of sheer exhaustion, I fall asleep.
After I sleep a while, I want to see my baby, and so I call for the nurse. A new nurse walks in, a middle-aged one, whom I have not seen before.
‘Can you please bring him to me?’ I ask.
She smiles and says she will.
She brings him wrapped in a blue towel, and there is a little tag around his wrist. His hand is so small, it is tinier than my forefinger. I cannot help marvelling at him, as the nurse places him on the bed beside me.
‘Are you alone? Nobody staying with you?‘ she asks.
‘No—I’m on my own,’ I say.
‘Oh,’ she says. She is silent for a minute.
‘Do you want me to stay for a while? I am on night duty today.’
Somehow I am glad for her offer. It is as if I want to share this magical moment with somebody. Anybody, really. And this nurse seems so motherly and protective. I find myself warming up to her instantly.
‘Yes, please, thank you,’ I say, and she smiles and settles down on the attendant’s cot.
‘He is very sweet. Does not trouble at all,’ she says as she gazes at my son, who has begun stirring in his sleep.
She shows me how to hold him, sit on a chair and then feed him. I learn quickly.
I ask her how often she has night duty, and she says she prefers it, as she is all alone in her house. She lost her husband many years ago, and she has only one daughter, who lives abroad. Most of the other nurses have families and young children, and she is happy to be on the night shift instead of them, she informs me.
‘So are you working?’ she asks.
‘I used to. Now I am not,’ I say.
‘Oh—what does your husband do?’ she asks.
How do I answer that? That the child’s father does not even know that I have given birth? That my parents wanted me to give up this baby for this very reason. That I went against their wishes, and decided to throw away my career, my studies and everything that I had, just to have this baby.
‘Ummm, I don’t know,’ I say, and she nods.
I think she understands.
‘Not so easy to raise a child alone. I was nineteen when I had my daughter, and her father passed away when she was four months old. Bike accident,’ she says, and there is a faraway look in her eyes.
I nod. I am simply too delirious that I have my own baby.
And what I do not tell her is that I am nineteen too.
CHAPTER 1
There are two ways to deal with bad grades. If they are yours, you study. But if they are your child’s, if you are anything like me, you yell at them. Or you try to understand them, even when you think you know all the answers, because that’s what all the parenting guides tell you to do. The latter usually helps and throws up win-win solutions. The former results in them turning into a wall. Trial and error has taught me that the latter, though a harder route, is always a better option.
‘Do you want to explain these?’ I ask my son, trying not to grit my teeth and trying harder to keep my voice sweet and calm, like the parenting manuals advice.
Don’t yell. Whatever you do, do not yell. Stay calm.
‘No,’ he says, as he blows a lock of hair away from his forehead with a practised upward puff of nonchalance, both hands stuck in the pockets of his jeans, indicating the end of any further discussion from his side.
He is almost as tall as me, and he now looks me in the eye with the classic I-can-defy-you-and-there-is-nothing-you-can-do-about-it pose that most teens adopt once they reach a certain height.
Of course, I don’t let go so easily. I am not his mother for nothing.
‘That is not an acceptable answer and you know it.’ I try to sound calm but my voice betrays me.
‘So?’
‘What do you mean “so”? How many times have I told you that nothing less than an A will do? Do you want to end up like me, working two jobs, struggling like a donkey? Or do you want to have an awesome career?’
‘You didn’t end up like this because of your grades. Be reasonable. You walked out on your parents because you wanted to have me and you refuse to take their money,’ he says calmly.
My anger at his reply spikes to an all-time high. Most of the time, I am reasonable and unruffled. I discuss things with him and treat him like an adult. But now, I am so mad I could punch him.
But that is not going to help. The rage, the sheer helplessness at his cool demeanour, plus the facts that he has so calmly and clearly stated act as catalysts, and I explode, giving vent to the fury that has been swelling inside me and that I have been trying to contain. I fling his report card across the bedroom and his answer papers neatly stacked inside it go flying and scatter all across the room.
‘You … you fool. I struggle so much to raise you well and now this…’ I am unable to complete the sentence.
He calmly picks up the report card and stacks all the answer sheets neatly inside. Then he hands me a bottle of water.
I breathe in and out deeply and glug some down.
He is fifteen going on twenty-five.
‘Ma, I have told you so many times,’ his voice is gentle, as though he is the parent, explaining something patiently to an errant child.
‘What?’
With my outburst, our roles are reversed now. I feel like an unreasonable teen throwing a tantrum, instead of the other way around.
‘That these are just the mock exams. They do it on purpose—give everyone bad grades. They are strict with correction. They want to shake you up so that you work harder for the boards,’ he says. He has now done a complete turnaround and changed from the sullen defiant teen to the understanding son that he usually is.
‘So what, Aryan? Why can’t you study harder, make your answers perfect, and get marks even in mocks?’ I demand.
I have never compromised on academics and the one thing that I insist on is good grades, even though I am a relaxed and indulgent parent in most other things.
‘It is impossible, Ma.’
‘Why is it impossible? Has everyone in your class got only Cs and Ds? Isn’t there anyone who has got an A or an A star?’
‘Yes, a couple of them did.’
‘Who?’
‘Nitin and Monika.’
‘Then? It isn’t impossible, right? It is not like they are smarter than you. It is probably because they work three times the amount that you do.’
I try to be as patient as I can. It is so darn important to get a good education, and that can happen only if your grades are good. Had I got a proper education, I wouldn’t be struggling like this, working two jobs, living in this decrepit old mansion that is charity from Neelanjana aunty, who no doubt means well.
Deep down I long for a place of my own. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon though.
For one, my unusual choice of career as a dog-sitter requires a place like this, which has a large compound, so that the dogs have enough space. And two, I am perpetually broke, my salary from the gym just about lasts till the end of the month. I don’t have much of a choice here. This is what makes me so angry when my son gets bad grades, due to lack of effort. I work my butt off, and the least he can do is put in that much application in his academics.
It isn’t anything that I haven’t told him a million times before. But I cannot help myself, and so I repeat it even though I am aware that I am beginning to sound like a broken record.
‘I don’t want to be like them. They are nerds. They don’t have a life. All they do is study, study and study. Come on, Mom!’
