Living

"Just survive", she thought to herself. Even the everyday felt cumbersome. Whoever thought death was easy! It wasn’t. It was hard; harder than living. She was alive, not dying. Not yet.

Tara looked around her. Her vision seemed blurred and she felt disoriented as she watched a filigree of light forming patterns while she labored through her breath. She tried to seat herself upright but struggled with the tangle of blankets around her and the many wires that brought fluid and carried life into her. So, she was in some make-shift hospital with all kinds of machines indicating her being alive lay about her droning in muffled sounds as they beeped random metrics of her health. She strained into a smile; she was alive. But it felt too painful, and she closed her eyes to drown in the darkness of her dreams. Or whatever remained of them.

The image was vivid in her head and the doctors had been unable to quieten her restless mind that burst with the haunting images of that day. Their baby. Their car and her husband. He was driving up the hills. She had briefly turned towards the baby at the back to ensure she didn’t need anything and within seconds, she saw bright lights from his side towards them. She lunged forward, undoing her seat belt as quickly as she could to reach out for the child and felt the impact of a loud thud, metal against metal. Too quick for the brain to process anything. They were taking the baby to her parents. She ought to see her grandparents, “even if they did not approve of the wedding”, she had told herself and convinced her husband. The baby would bring happiness. They would not fight with her once they saw the baby. At least that was how she had convinced him to undertake the long drive. It was not dangerous in anyway and thousands of people took the route every day. Before they had begun, they had fed her and dressed her in her favorite pink dress. She looked so adorable and Tara remembered how they had taken a picture with her holding the baby in the car before starting off and sent that to their families. She had captioned it ‘Taking Mira to meet her grandparents’. They had all smiled and the baby had been fast asleep, lost in slumber with a big bow peeping out from the bundle her husband held. He had then handed her over to Tara, kissed them both, fastened his seatbelt and started the drive. He had been driving, humming a tune when he had asked Tara to pass him some water. They were about to break for lunch. And somehow the moments that came after seemed like a contorted, confused reel that played in front of her. She felt like screaming that the sequence was all wrong and that the cameraman had missed something essential.

Tara remembered the blaring sirens and her outstretched arm that reached into darkness. She could only see shoes of all kinds fleeing about her. It seemed diabolically comical, and she wanted to laugh. But everything hurt: her head, crushed under the weight of a lifeless machine and her husband and baby smothered into messy clumps, their life snapped out of them. Life was so frail, so transient and yet that moment seemed to be the only memory she had in her mind, weighing on her rendering all other moments insignificant. She unfurled her fingers that bore random scratches and marks-inexplicable even to the people who sometimes stormed in and out of her room and sometimes waltzed in and out depending on the imminence of her own transience. She had clutched onto the pink bow, bloodied and mud stained. That was her life. That was their death.

****

Rizwan sat in front of the lifeless woman he had brought in. It had been six months he had tended over her and finally she had opened her eyes. Before he could see her, she had closed them again. As he walked out of the hospital to the mosque that was situated walking distance, and as he went for his namaaz, he prayed for Tara, for her life, so that she may live. His daughter would have been so pleased. Inshallah. He prayed for her, so that in her death, she would have found sweet release.

Rizwan had just celebrated the birth of their daughter, Jahanara. She had been born to him and his wife after eleven years of marriage. She had slipped into their world bringing them utmost joy, just when they had given up hope of having children. They had tried everything they could: IVFs, quacks, medicines, prayers and spent all their savings with the hope of becoming parents someday. So, when Aisha had skipped her period for three months, she had been very careful. When her belly had begun to grow, she would break the news to Rizwan, who was so shocked, he didn’t know whether he would cry or laugh. They had hoped for a girl, for she would bring joy to their small family.  She would be their world, their ‘jahan’ and their ‘ara’ or decor. Together, she was meant to ‘live, to flower’ and with that naïve hope he had named her thus. Jahanara, the center of their universe. She had not lived more than three years, and their world had come crashing down when Jahanara had been found buried under rubble and scrap metal, her body lying limp against his wife’s bosom. The two women he knew, he had, lay in the cold of the night while he frantically called for help and dialed acquaintances using his bloodied fingers.

Rizwan opened his eyes. The memory of Aisha holding Jahanara flashed before him while he turned his face to the right and to the left whispering his prayers. Why was the universe so cruel? He thought, as he got up and walked back to the hospital ruminating over whether Tara would open her eyes again.

*****

She had. Three days later. And she seemed to be able to recognize the objects the nurses showed her. Allah had been merciful. She had been alright, thought Rizwan, as they sat in silence united by fate.

She sat up and looked at him. She had so many questions in her mind. She had so many tears that had never found their way from her heart and yet she had been told that he had been keeping her alive. “Why?” she had wanted to know, why? When everything had been taken away? Then, why?

Rizwan looked at her in silence. She stared back, blinking slowly as the weight of the bandages still made her efforts deliberate and slow. They looked at each other in silence, staring at the emptiness of their life and the space between. “Rizwan” he said finally cutting the stillness of the air between them by uttering his name. His voice sounded unfamiliar even to himself. “Tara” she said straining with the two syllables of her name. “I know” he smiled, crowfeet appearing at the edges of his eyes that seemed fatigued, tired, and even sad. He looked away, outside the window and said “I prayed for you, my child, all these months. I hope you get better soon…” he began before she cut him with a soft, “But why Rizwan?”

The question hung in the air heavily about him. He had asked himself this question a zillion times and his initial goodwill had been to rush her and her baby to the hospital. The drill was all too familiar to him, he had done this a week ago and he could not let the baby die. Not for his sake, not for Aisha’s sake and not for Jahanara. He looked at the mangled remains of the father. It was too late to save him and Rizwan had prayed for his deliverance as he helped the ambulance staff lift the mother and child. He was meant to stay only till they contacted the next-of-kin. But during such moments, there was nothing ordinary. He came each day and when there was no one to ask about the mother and child, he felt it had been his duty to save them. It had been a chance Allah had given him which had been denied to him earlier. This would be his salvation. People had initially understood his services to be that of a brooding father, a brooding husband. A grieving man. But soon the speculations had turned hostile especially when he could not save the baby. It had been two days and they had done everything they could to save the child. Everything. And yet again, everything hadn’t been enough. Because that was what he had learnt, life was not about everything…it was about ‘something’…

“Because I am a grieving man” he said finally, his saddened face pockmarked with the drops of sunlight entering the room. He smiled and walked slowly towards Tara. He touched her forearm and instantly Tara felt his pain, his bereavement, and in the comfort of their untold stories, they cried in each other’s solace.