Chapter 3
After around ten minutes, he found himself rushing into the
hospital. Around ten yards away, he spotted Sindhu lying on a stretcher. Man,
she was breathing! He let out a long whoosh and leaned against the wall. There
were two nurses huddled over her, but she was still alive.
But when he went closer he froze. The left side of her upper
body was sort of… disfigured. Her left eye, the skin on her face had almost
melted away… Acid, he realized in horror.
He knew he had to run to her, but he felt as though a
dumbbell was tied to each of his leg. His vision became blurred, his head
throbbed. It seemed like all his vital organs had ceased to function. As he ran
his hand through his hair, his mind projected a series of random incidents at
an unbelievable pace. He tried to slow them down. When he began to concentrate,
he heard the voices.
‘Let’s go to the police….You better stay away from her… Why didn’t you
tell me before…Why not?... Or else, you might end up being hospitalized for
life… I wasn’t sure if he was stalking me…They would make us seem like
criminals…’
Suddenly, it struck him. His eyes widened. He felt the blood
rush to his head. ‘It must have been that
bastard…that bastard who had been stalking Sindhu a month earlier’ he told
himself.
He clenched his fists. He and his friends had warned him
twice. He did seem to back off. He had stopped stalking her. ‘Oh god! We must have approached the police,
or maybe no, I should have beaten him to death.’ He thought.
Suddenly he wanted to kill him, rip his body into thin
shreds, throw acid on every part of his body and watch him wriggle, watch him die…
Pooja walked over to him and sat down beside him.
“I’m terribly sorry, Aakhil”, she said.
He looked at her bloodshot eyes; he knew that she must be
feeling more miserable than him. She is Sindhu’s childhood friend, after all.
“It was th-that bloody stalker”, she added after a moment of
silence.
He nodded slowly, very slowly, gritting his teeth.
“She lost her left eye…and her upper left arm looks really
bad. The doctor told that she has to undergo around twenty to thirty surgeries…
He just stared blankly at the floor. He couldn’t respond; he
felt numb.
Then, he heard her break into sobs. He opened his mouth to
speak, but the huge lump in his throat didn’t allow him to do any talking. He
gently patted on her shoulder and turned away.
After half-an-hour, they were done with the first aid. “Maybe you should talk to her”, he heard Pooja
say.
‘Talk to her?’
echoed a voice inside his head. The idea of talking to Sindhu now seemed like
an alien concept to him. He sighed. Only around an hour ago, he had wanted to
propose her…
He slowly tottered towards the room in which Sindhu was
lying.
For a spilt of a second, he saw her face, especially the
part that had melted away, and then she immediately buried her face into her
hands.
“Please don’t come in, Aakhil, get out!” she screamed.
“Sindhu…please…”
His voice choked. Tears began to roll down his cheeks. Seconds
later, he realized it was a serious mistake. His tears made her yell louder.
“Get out, I say!”
He stumbled out of the room, feeling more heart-broken than
ever.
Three weeks had passed since he spoke to her. None of his
calls were answered, none of his messages received replies.
What nagged the most was, she won’t allow him to lay his
eyes on her, atleast not when she’s awake. He desperately wanted to talk to her
in person, holding her hands and gently stroking her hair. But he didn’t want
to upset her. So, he made visits to the hospital and her house only after checking
with her parents if she was asleep. And during the visits, he noticed how a
shawl neatly covered that part of her face. He spent hours talking to her parents and her
lawyer and did almost everything that their son would do, if they had any.
He wondered how he had survived these three weeks. Each day
seemed to be more painful than the previous one, with each second making him
feel guiltier, making them grow more distant. Maybe, this is how lovely couples
fall apart. ‘Not that the lovely couple
tag really suits us’ he thought bitterly.
Twenty one days sans Sindhu’s calls and messages gave him a
lot of time and space for introspection; terribly painful, nerve-wrecking
introspection. And it resulted in one of the worst realizations: His love was
dependent mainly on physical attractions. All the tiny, squeaky voices in his head tried
to deny the inner’s voice’s accusation. But deep inside he knew how right his
inner voice had been.
***
After the acid attack, he came to the park every day. His
lifeless eyes gazed at the hustle and bustle, as he solemnly contemplated on
the terrible incident. He slowly, deliberately recalled all the fine, intrinsic
details of it, allowing guilt to take a toll on him. More than often, he
desperately wished to see Sindhu’s normal, unburned face. He hated to admit it, but sometime caught
himself wondering if he would love her less now.
But today, exactly three weeks after the acid attack, he was
a changed man. He decided to let go of the acid attack. True, it did cause a
permanent stain on their picturesque love life. But after all, it had been a
stain which had kick-started their love life.
And anyways, a love life can’t remain to be picturesque
forever. Sometimes, it ought to get stained… And now he knew their love can now
withstand worse stains.
He decided to visit the hospital today, no matter what. He
got on his bike and shifted the gear. As he heard the engine roar, he thought,
‘Hey angel, I’m coming to see you and nobody can stop me from doing that. Not
even you.’
***
He stood at the entrance of the room, gripping the frame of
the door. His heart did a mini somersault.
The first thing that caught his eye was the bright red shawl covered
that part of her face. She was lying against the propped up pillows with a
novel in her hand. He squinted to see it was a novel by her favorite author Dan
Brown, or rather their favorite author. She placed her finger as a bookmark and
fixed her gaze on him.
He could see hatred, pain and anger in her eyes but what
shone better was her want to live, live past these struggles, insults and the pain.
He expected her to shoo him away like the last time.
Instead she spoke“If
you’re here to talk about the lawyer or the thug, let me tell you; I don’t want
any of it. I don’t care, anymore. He threw acid on me only once. But there are
people around me who burn my feelings every day, every single moment…”
She stopped abruptly.
He thought the tears would come gushing out. But no, she didn’t cry. Her
eyes were red and watery, but not a single tear was to be seen.
He took a deep breath and gripped the door frame harder.
“No, it’s not about him.”
“Then, what else?”
He felt a sharp pain
in his heart. She made it seem as though they had nothing to talk about, she
made him feel like a complete stranger. He suddenly realized how far she had
gone away from him.
‘What can I do to make her understand that I love her more
than ever? True, I had been smitten by
her looks and found her really attractive, but now my love was beyond the
fading charm, beyond the sweet, flirtatious talk, beyond the meeting of the
eyes, and beyond a lot more things ‘ he thought
bitterly.
Suddenly he found himself being on the verge of tears. ‘No,
not now. O god! Not again.’ he told myself.
A painful silence enveloped the room, like a thick layer of
smoke suffocating me. I knew it was suffocating her too, but she would never
admit it.
A chill breeze entered the room , as if to break the
silence. It made the curtains flutter; her shawl got slightly displaced,
only slightly. She immediately pulled it back. He felt the sudden urge to pull
away her shawl, caress that part of her face and shower it with his kisses. But
he still stood at the entrance, gazing helplessly at her.
She slowly spoke, “Maybe we’ll talk some time later. I’m tired.
“But Sindhu…”
She looked irritated. “Oh Aakhil, can’t you understand? Do I have to
explain everything to you? Get out, now! Get out of my life, please! Please…”
She paused for a moment. Her voice became close to a whisper.
“Aakhil, I know you don’t deserve to be yelled at. But it’s hard to keep my
cool, because I have gone through enough. These three weeks meant hell to me.
And I know it’ll only get worse…”
Her voice cracked. She drank water and continued to speak,
“You know what, I want to punch peoples’ faces before they could turn them away
feeling disgusted for having laid their eyes on my face. I want push people out
of my life, before they shove me off from their hearts. I hope you understand…”
“Sindhu, no one can understand you better than me.”
Her expression softened. Her right eye tenderly gazed at me
for a moment and then it fell to the ground.
Then the breeze came again.
Her shawl fluttered, slowly very slowly, it revealed her face. She made
no attempt to replace it now.
He went numb. He relived the nightmare again and imagined
the how painful it must have been for her.
He searched her face. She looked very different from the woman he had
found attractive and had flirted with. But he knows she is the woman he wants
to wake up seeing every day, the woman who would fill his little lifeless house
with love, happiness and the sweet sounds of little children, and with whom he would
be huddled with in the veranda to watch the dawn break and the sky change
colours, the woman with whom he would spend his last moments…
He swallowed hard and prepared to speak.
“You have every right to push me out of your life. But allow
me to sort out few things and then I shall walk away.”
He doubted if he would ever walk away from her. Very rarely
does he come up with which dramatic lines. He made a mental note to tell her
later that he spoke such lines only to add a little spice to their
conversation.
He closed his eyes for a moment. The lines that he had
rehearsed for the marriage proposal back then seemed so meaningless now. She
was a changed person, a much stronger person than she used to be and his love
was no longer superficial.
She slowly climbed out of the bed and bent down to pick the
shawl.
“No! Sindhu, you don’t have to wear that. You don’t have to hide
your scars; the scars show what you’ve gone through. There’s a tough journey ahead, I agree, but
you can’t run away from it. You ought to
show the monsters out there that you won’t let the scars affect your dignity.
And there are many who need inspiration and support from you. You got to reach
out to them…” He stopped suddenly
feeling breathless.
She cried, smiled and blushed at the same time. She then
closed her eyes and remained still for a very long moment. It’s hard to explain
what happened next.
She came running towards him and flung her arms around his
neck. He stood still, not knowing what to do. When she pulled her arms away, he
spoke, “I- I want to a part of the journey ahead of you, I want to stay by your
side all the time. Sindhu, Will you marry me?”
She nodded, looking straight into his eyes. He wrapped his
hands around her and smiled through the tears.
