After All This Time (15 page)

‘Oh my God. What is happening?’ Lavanya cried from the back seat.

‘Just your bike starting up,’ Shourya grinned.

‘No. No, no, no. There is something wrong. It was not making this noise when the guy delivered it.’

‘Did he ride it to your place?’

‘I . . . don’t know. But there is definitely something wrong with this. Do you think the silencer is broken?’

Shourya could tell by the tone and shrill quality of Lavanya’s voice that she was terrified. He adjusted one of the rear-view mirrors so he could see her. It was dark outside, but the dull yellow light coming from the street lamps showed him Lavanya’s petrified expression.

He brought her arms around his body and placed them on top of each other against the tank. ‘Bend forward. You have to relax your back—you can’t sit straight!’

‘This feels so weird—’

‘Hold on tight!’

‘Wait, no!’

He couldn’t hear anything she said after that. Her arms were clutching his stomach tightly in the beginning, but she relaxed gradually and held on to the tank instead. Shourya tried to let her ease into the experience, slowly increasing the speed as he felt her get more comfortable.

They did not stop even once on the way. Lavanya helped him with the directions by checking the GPS on her phone. With the roads empty that early in the morning, they reached Agra in a little over two hours.

The sky was lightening. They were on a road that gave them a nice view of the Taj Mahal. As Shourya pulled up and looked for space to park the bike, he asked, ‘Do you see that?’

‘What?’ he saw Lavanya lift up her head from his back and look at him in the rear-view mirror.

‘The sun.’

‘Where?’

‘East.’ Shourya rolled his eyes. ‘Trust you to ruin a perfect cinematic moment.’

‘What? I wasn’t looking,’ Lavanya made a hurt face before she looked at the sun, which was starting to peek out of the clouds, lighting up the sky with an orange glow. Shourya parked the bike outside the accessible area; there was a sign stating no vehicles were permitted within 500 metres of the monument. Lavanya got down and stretched her arms.

After two hours of listening to the constant roar of the bike, they found themselves in sudden silence. Shourya’s thighs and hands were warm from the heat of the vehicle, despite the December cold.

‘That was . . . something,’ Lavanya said.

‘
This
is something,’ Shourya pointed at the Taj Mahal.

The morning sun came out from behind the orange clouds and illuminated the city with a soft glow. The Taj Mahal stood before them, hiding under a translucent white veil of mist.

‘Shall we?’ Shourya asked.

Lavanya gave him her arm and they started walking towards the monument. He had seen innumerable pictures of it ever since he was a child, but it was only now, when he was so close to it that he realized the magnitude of it. If it could look this magnificent from half a kilometre away, he could only imagine what being inside was going to feel like.

The walk up to the entrance was lined with craftspeople selling souvenirs and all sorts of gift items, from small replicas of the Taj to necklaces, refrigerator magnets, embroidered handbags and handmade key chains.

Even though it was early morning, there were plenty of tourists around. Shourya was annoyed by the security checks and the long queue, but as soon as they were let inside, it was as if they had stepped into another era. The gardens were green and lush, the Mughal architecture exquisite. When they walked in through the east gate, the Taj Mahal stood before them in all its glory. Walking leisurely, almost in a daze, they took their time reaching the monument.

Still some distance from the Taj’s entrance, Shourya paused, and held Lavanya’s hand. ‘Wait. Let’s stay here?’

She didn’t protest.

They moved to the side, and out of the way of the tourists. They were facing the sun, which had climbed up on the clouds and was shining brighter. It seemed almost lazy, the way it stood in the background, not harsh, not interfering with the cool breeze that made their hair dance. Hers shone with a red sheen, flying away from her face.

‘So?’ Shourya looked at her and asked. She had not spoken in a while.

‘It’s breathtaking, isn’t it?’ Lavanya gushed. She shivered and pulled her jacket closer to her body.

‘You okay?’ Shourya whispered.

She nodded.

‘Again with the nod.’

‘I’m okay. Much better than okay. I’m great,’ Lavanya murmured, looking at him before turning her attention back to the clouds that seemed to change colour every few minutes.

It was as if the air cast a spell on the two of them. They did not care about seeing the Taj any more. They found a romance with the clouds and forgot everything else.

There was an overwhelming acidic smell in the room. She was finding it difficult to breathe. The smell was familiar in a way, but also very alien at the same time. Cat urine—that is what the room reeked of. But there was something else mixed with it, something sweet and sickening.

She stank of it too. Not only had she smoked it, she had also slammed it into her veins. She could feel it dance inside her, moving in her body, coursing in her blood. She had a strong impulse to slash her wrist and let the venom flow out.

She could feel the toxins in her body long after the effects of the coke had disappeared. Her hair, gathered in a chic bun at the nape of her neck the previous night, had come undone. It stuck to her face and neck. When she looked down her nose, she could see that her mascara had managed to reach the tip of it.

She supported herself on her knee, before clutching the doorknob and trying to pull her body up. Her legs refused to support her weight, but she did not give up. It took time, but eventually she managed to crawl her way outside. Once she reached the road, she ran.

She ran and ran and ran, but she could never run away from it. It was in her. It was a part of her, and it was there to stay.

Lavanya woke up with a jolt. Her hair was sticking to her skin, strewn all over her face, neck and chest. She pushed it away angrily and sat up. The nightmares needed to stop. She had forgotten the difference between memories and dreams. Were these nightmares just nightmares, or had the things she dreamt of actually happened? There was no way to tell. It’s not like coke helps cognitive behaviour or memory.

She remembered how it happened. Diving into her studies, and then into work, she had only woken up to her need for a life and friends when she had been having a terrible time at the office. She knew most lawyers did cocaine to help them stay up and work, and they met up at the pub downtown every weekend to snort up. She thought that could be the opening she needed, and had forced herself a few times to go there. But she was never able to build up the courage to join her colleagues at the PSM table. That’s when a man with a tiny ponytail had approached her. He worked at some firm on Wall Street; she had seen him around at the pub a few times. One night, after a particularly bad week at work, she had taken him up on his offer and joined him at a house party at his friend’s place.

Her recollections of the party were mostly hazy. She remembered up till the part where she was snorting cocaine, she had done it a few times before in law school too. But she must have been very high to have agreed to inject it with a needle.

The dreams only served to distort her memories of that night further.

When Lavanya woke up the next morning, she found herself tired of running from everything, all the time. She decided she had had enough. She was prepared to face the realities of her life, and that meant she had to find courage to call up Dr Shah’s office and set an appointment.

Lavanya had run away from AIIMS after getting the tests Dr Shah had recommended done. Ever since then, Dr Shah’s secretary had been calling her daily to set an appointment with the doctor to read and understand the test reports and work on her treatment plan. But Lavanya had been ignoring her, fearing the reports. Those reports could be her death sentence. They were going to decide whether her disease could be controlled or if it had already proceeded to AIDS.

All reason told her that it could not have, not so soon. She did not feel particularly sick; her body ached, but it had to do with riding pillion in a crouched position on the long bike rides and the mixture of cold breeze and hot sun they had faced later that day.

If she was right about the time when she got infected, which she was sure she was, the disease had been diagnosed relatively early. Lavanya could not think of anything other than sharing a needle that could have infected her with HIV. She had had a quiet and dull life, except for periodic bouts of rebellion when she had lost herself in the sweet smoke of weed and the oblivion of white rum.

Lavanya picked up her phone and called the doctor’s office before she chickened out again. As it turned out, Dr Shah’s schedule was packed for the day, but her secretary managed to squeeze her in the next day. He also reminded Lavanya that her reports had been ready for a week. Lavanya promised him that she would pick them up from the hospital the same day.

Her next call was to Shourya, to see how the plan for the Rishikesh road trip was coming along. As soon as he picked up, she said, ‘Next stop, Rishikesh!’

‘Nope,’ came the dreary response from the other end.

‘Shourya.’

‘Don’t Shourya me. I’m not going. It’s not going to happen.’

‘Why can’t we go? This is so unfair. You are no fun,’ Lavanya complained.

‘I’m okay with not being any fun as long as I don’t have to ride that bike for 500 kilometres in a day,’ Shourya said grumpily.

‘You said we’d go to Agra first and see, and if it’s worth it, then we’d go to Rishikesh. We had fun on the Taj Mahal trip, right? You said you did.’

‘I did. But only up to the point when we got there and stayed outside. It was all downhill from there, and you know it.’

They had explored the monument and the Mughal architecture around it, but by the time they had finished, they had found themselves fighting to stay together. The place had got way too crowded for them to explore idly. After eating a breakfast that was incredibly greasy, but not delicious enough to make up for the excess oil, they had got back on the road. By the time they reached home, the sun had set. It had taken them twice as long on their way back because of the afternoon traffic. The sun added to the incredible amount of heat the bike generated and they had to take regular breaks to allow the vehicle to cool down and keep themselves from burning.

By the time they were back, their bodies were in knots. The weird position their spines had to stay in for hours did not help. Superbikes may be a lot of fun, but practicality is hardly their best quality.

‘I get what you mean,’ Lavanya relented.

Whenever she remembered that Shourya was be in Delhi for just one more week, she could not help but feel unnerved. She had not figured out what she was going to do yet. Whether she wanted to stay back here and get treatment, once the pretence of winter holidays was over, or return to New York and hide from her family again. Once Shourya left, she would have nothing to hide behind, and would either have to confront her parents or run away. She excelled in the latter, but was not sure if it was the answer, not this time.

She sighed. ‘Still. We should do
something
. Or do you plan to waste the last one week you have here?’

‘Don’t worry. We will do something,’ Shourya promised.

Sometimes, she was crippled with fear. Even though she spent most of her days actively trying not to think about AIDS, sometimes it became the only thing she thought about. And her days were getting more and more AIDS-y recently.

She had it. She
knew
she had it. She could feel it in her stomach the same way she could feel the venom moving through her veins the day she got infected with HIV. She did not have to open the envelopes she was holding to find out how bad it was.

Her hair was sticking to her scalp again. Lately, it had been sticking to any and every part of her body it could reach, at all times. She had never had a problem with sweating before, and she refused to let it pass as coincidental.
It was a symptom.

Just like the whiteness of her palms. She had no blood in her body. AIDS was drinking all of it. When she pulled down her lower eyelid, all she saw was the palest pink. There was no sign of blood. Just like her skin, which was becoming a sickly shade of yellow.

She had the strongest feeling of having AIDS when she was at the hospital. On their first meeting, when Dr Shah had explained how HIV worked and how it caused AIDS, her stomach told her that the virus inside her had already caused AIDS. When she went back to the hospital to collect her reports, surrounded by sick people, she knew she was one of them.

It had started to show on the outside. The sweatiness, the paleness. It wouldn’t be long before bigger symptoms started surfacing. She tried not to look at the other patients as she asked the receptionist if Dr Shah’s schedule had an earlier opening and she could meet Lavanya sooner than appointed. There wasn’t.

Lavanya intentionally walked past Dr Shah’s office anyway, not sure what she was hoping to see. Through the tiny glass panel on the door, she could see the doctor speaking to two people sitting opposite her. Lavanya stayed there and watched Dr Shah gesture to explain something to her patients. How many times was Lavanya going to go to that cabin? How much time of her life would be spent there? Once they read the report and the level of her sickness was established, that was it. She would officially be an AIDS patient.

She gulped.

She could not run away from it.

Even before Shourya could knock on Lavanya’s door, Toughy greeted him by hopping on him. He bent down to pick him up, but the puppy managed to wriggle out of his grasp and proceeded to limp around Shourya in circles. Shourya threw him off by running around him in circles instead, and the poor dog sat down, confused.

‘What are you doing?’ Lavanya asked. He found her standing against the half-open front door, head tilted questioningly.

‘Don’t judge! He started it.’

‘I expect it from him; he’s a dog. What’s your excuse?’

‘Loosen up!’ Shourya picked up Toughy and was rewarded with a long lick on his cheek and a reasonable amount of tail wagging.

‘He’s being punished right now. He has been a bad dog, haven’t you, Toughy?’ Lavanya came to them and scratched Toughy’s ear. ‘Aw, I can never stay mad at him. But he did poop on the carpet.’

‘And you thought locking him out in the lawn would be a fitting punishment? Look at him, he’s having a blast out here!

‘It’s just who he is. I don’t think he’s capable of being sad.’ She was looking lovingly at Toughy, a slow smile appearing on her lips. But it was she who looked sad. ‘Give him to me.’

‘Didn’t you just say you were punishing him?’ Shourya asked.

‘Loosen up, dude,’ Lavanya muttered and walked back inside.

Shourya couldn’t see anyone else around in the house. Lavanya looked very subdued, and the fact that she had put Toughy out in the lawn and was alone at home made him suspicious. As he entered her room, Shourya asked, ‘Is everything okay?’

‘Yep,’ Lavanya replied from where she sat on a little plush sofa in the corner with Toughy.

‘Aunty, Uncle—everybody?’

‘Yep,’ she repeated, not meeting his eyes.

Shourya fought the urge to ask her what she was doing, coming out of AIIMS that morning. He had a feeling that something was wrong with either her mother or father. Her refusal to look at him, and keeping things from him annoyed him.

‘What did you do all day?’ he asked, studying her closely.

‘The day has just started,’ she said and looked up at him. ‘What is the plan? Are we going to do something fun today, or just waste away the rest of your time here?’