As he ambled out of the Operation Theatre, barely being
able to support himself, he felt his phone vibrate ferociously in his pocket
for the umpteenth time that evening and knowing, who it was, he did not answer
it. Seeing an empty chair, he slumped into it, allowing his tensed body to
relax for the first time in hours. There was, however no scope of relaxation
for his mind. Tears rolled down his lightly-bearded cheeks as his lachrymal
glands succumbed to immense neural torture.
The dam had burst and now his mind raced through his life-
flicking through image after image with an uttered word here and a heated
argument there, sprinkled with generous does of loving moments and spoonful of
disagreements , all garnished in blurred monochrome. Finally it stopped at a
singular image, which had first popped into his head when he had returned home
to find his wife lying on the bedroom floor in a pool of blood. The image of
where it all started.
He still remembered the day he met her very clearly – it
was a memory that his brain was not willing to forget. The setting was nothing
dramatic. It had been a cool monsoon
evening in Kolkata and his eyes had fallen upon her while he had been trying to
locate his seat aboard the Delhi-bound Jet Airways flight. She had been seated
on the seat adjacent to his and he had continued to take stolen glances at her
while shoving his suitcase into the compartment above. Having made himself
comfortable he had taken out his cell phone and was searching his pockets for
his earphones when she had volunteered, “Lost something?” He had mumbled
something inaudible and still embarrassed had vehemently shaken his head,
which, as he remembered with a smile on his tear-soaked lips, had caused her to laugh out loud. The ice,
having been broken and the earphones forgotten, that had been the beginning of
it all.
As his mind reverted back to the present, he realized that
it had been the beginning of the end. Five
days together in Delhi had made sure that they knew each other too well to be
simply acquaintances. On their return to Kolkata, they had exchanged addresses
to keep the phone numbers, previously exchanged, company and one thing had led
to another and a flight together had translated into frequent coffee breaks and
stolen meetings in restaurants and lounges and soon their friendship had
blossomed into something more meaningful and both had started to introduce each
other to friends and family. He had attended her sister’s wedding and had quite
a nice time too, dancing without a care in the world, under the groggy effect
of alcohol albeit. She had in turn attended his mother’s funeral and provided
ample solace to the grieving son who had been bereaved. Their closeness had
become the talk of the lanes and by-lanes around their residences and the topic
of hushed conversations in both their offices. These conversations annoyed him-
could a man and a woman not be just friends? He had thought that the childish
link-ups would have left his back once he had left the four walls of the
college building but clearly he had been proved wrong. She, however, knew that
she was falling for him and even though she had tried to talk herself out of it
, slowly but surely she was losing control over her Platonic feelings.
As he looked at his watch, he realized that it was already
a new day. Only two hours back, his life was about as perfect as it could get-
a loving wife, two children who jumped onto his the moment he returned home and
everything he could have asked for when he had passed out of college. A lot had
happened in the two hours, however, that had wrecked his life and perhaps
changed it forever. He thought back to how he had rushed home an hour back, ran
up the stairs and opened the bedroom door with the sense of foreboding making
his heart pound on his chest feverishly. The sight that welcomed him did not
help ease the pressure on his heart but having been blessed with a cool head he
managed to quickly dial the hospital and then his sister, the former to save
his wife and the latter to take the children for the night. Perspiring heavily
on a cool monsoon evening, he bandaged his wife’s slit wrist and cleaned the
blood from her body and carried her downstairs. Without changing out of his
blood-soaked shirt he accompanied his senseless wife into the ambulance and
urged the driver to drive faster. In 10 minutes he ambled out of the OT.
His phone vibrated ferociously in his pocket. He sighed and
taking it out, switched it off. He already had one uneasy conscience to answer
to for now. He sighed again and cleared his parched throat. He was thirsty but
neither did he have the strength to get up to quench his thirst nor could he
brush away the fact from his mind that the sequence of events that threatened
to turn his life into ashes had all started with a glass of water. His mind
wandered back to the water-cooler near his cubicle in his office about two
hours back when he had been taken aback. She was the last person he had
expected in his office in the middle of the day but he suppressed his
astonishment at her sudden appearance and proceeded to hear what she had to
say. His sudden inability to talk had not been helped by the fact that she had
been wearing the same shirt that she had worn when they had first met.
His pulse had quickened gradually, the smile had vanished
from his face, his eyebrows had gradually arched into a frown and beads of
perspiration had appeared on his forehead with every word that she uttered. He
wanted to make her stop but he also wanted to hear the extent of damage that
had been caused. When she had finished and sighed, gulping down the water from
his glass, he had risen and cursing himself for forgetting his cell-phone at
home, walked out of the office before anyone could stop him.
In the car, his mind had been not on the road and the drive
home was all a blur now. All that his mind had focused on was the imaginary
memory of his wife receiving the call on his cellphone and listening to a
female voice exonerating her love for him. She was possessive, he had thought
but perhaps she would not do anything rash. His hope had disappeared with time
and by the time he had parked his car outside his front door, he had just
prayed for her life. Having seen his cell phone on the floor, near the front
door his hope had vapourised and he had rushed upstairs. Something had broken
inside him as he had run in on his wife lying in a pool of blood.
As he sighed and stared longingly at the doors that opened
into the OT, he wished, foolishly, that the doors would swing open and his wife
would step out in her favourite sari, majestically sweeping her fingers through
the air, showing off her Bengali pride but moments turned into minutes and yet
the door remained firmly shut. As he took off his spectacles and allowed the
tears to flow freely, he wished he had not forgotten to pack his earphones that
day and how he wished he had not forgotten his cellphone today.
About ten kilometres away, she tried to call him again but
his cellphone was still switched off. Her hands trembled as she withdrew a pair
of earphones from her pocket, the same that had fallen out of his bag on that
plane to Delhi, which she had never returned, and clutching them close to her
heart she jumped off the bridge into the Ganges.
The doors of the OT swung open and he looked up hopefully,
just in time to see the doctor walk slowly towards him.
“Sorry”,Dr.Dutta uttered, placing his hand softly on his
shoulder, as he stood up.
He collapsed back onto the chair.
