Maybe

My breathing is ragged and strained. Every breath I take and release hurts a little more. I feel choked and my throat burns. My head hurts. I try to open my eyes but a bandage wrapped around my head obstructs them. I adjust the bandage to open my eyes. My whole body is broken and it pains as if it has been put into a blender and ground.

I take some time to gather where I am. Why does everything hurt so much? Is this a bad dream? I slowly open my eyes partially and look at the ceiling above. It’s not familiar. Then it strikes me. The Chandni Chowk blast.

It all comes back to me. The noise, the people, the blood, the severed limbs, the mangled remains of people, cars and buildings. It is a lot harder this time. I can think more clearly. I could’ve been among the dead.

‘Deb?’ a female voice says. ‘Are you okay?’

I look at her and my eyes light up. She is like a shot of morphine that takes every bit of pain away. I feel alive.

‘Yes,’ I say feebly.

I look at her and I am mortified. She has tears in her eyes and it looks like she has been crying for a long time. Did something happen to me? I force my aching neck to move a little and look at the bed I lie on. I try to move my hands and legs. I am not maimed or paralysed. I have just a few cuts and burns here and there. I have been lucky.

‘What happened?’ I ask.

 ‘There was a terrible blast in Chandni Chowk,’ she says. ‘Eighty-nine people are dead so far.’

She sits on the bed, hugs me, and starts crying. I feel a few? teardrops percolate through my hospital robe and wet my skin. A few tears find their way into my eyes too. I don’t know if it’s because she’s crying or because of what I saw this morning. People had died, lost their arms, their legs and their loved ones right in front of my eyes. It was like a nightmare. Only, a lot worse. It happened for real. The animal cries of people, the blood and the limbs that had gone flying all around me—it had all happened. All those people are actually dead. Eighty-nine of them. I am not. I am still in one piece and have my girlfriend hugging me.

Why? I ask myself as I see her cry with her head on my chest. I think about all the people who lost their lives this morning or have been crippled. What would their loved ones be doing? If I were dead, what would Avantika be doing? I shudder to think about it. I was almost dead. Or maimed. I feel grateful.

‘Do Mom and Dad know?’ I ask her. She shakes her head. ‘They called you?’

‘Yes,’ she says, still crying. ‘I told them you were in office.’

I smile at her. She knows me and my parents so well. My parents live in Muscat, Oman, and they find it very uneasy to live away from me. They miss me a lot, but Dad has work there. Even though I am a big guy now, they are as protective about me as they were when I was a school-going kid. I still remember the fifteen-minute sermon I used to get from Mom and Dad whenever I would go out. ‘Look at both sides when you cross the road,’ ‘Don’t talk to anyone,’ ‘Don’t eat anything that anyone offers.’ You get the drift. It continued way into my late teens.

Had they heard about this, they would have come rushing to Delhi and never gone back. I don’t want that to happen. Avantika and I have been secretly engaged for the past year or so and life is perfect. My parents don’t know that. Nor do they know that we live together. They would flip; it is still socially unacceptable. Avantika and I love the thrill of doing something people warn us against. Our judgement and good sense are often clouded by the love in our hearts.

‘Thank you,’ I say to her. She smiles back at me. ‘You should rest,’ she says and I see a nurse enter the room.

 The nurse plunges a syringe in the tube attached to my hand and I feel a little sleepy almost instantly. Sedatives, I guess. It lessens the pain, in one’s body but not in one’s head.

‘Deb ...’

‘Yes, baby?’ I murmur, already half-asleep.

‘I love you,’ I hear her meek whisper before dozing off. I love her too,

more than she will ever know. She is my world. I open my mouth but I drift off before the words can escape my lips. I love you. As I say these words, I hope that it’s not the last time.

When I wake up, I find that the pain has lessened to an extent. I see bloodstained bandages on my head, my arms and my legs. I make my way —with a little help—towards the chambers of the doctor to get a few checks done before they can release me. On my way, I see many people around with far worse injuries than mine, with thicker bandages, smiling and laughing despite all that pain. Some of them are missing a limb or two. It is hard very depressing. Given the present scenario, it is even more so. I cannot wait to get out of here and go home. The walk to the doctor’s chambers is really long and I try not to look around me.

Inside the chambers, they carry out some final tests on me, ask me if I’m feeling all right, and let me go.

‘Are you okay?’ Avantika asks.

It has been an hour since we’ve been sitting in the car and I haven’t said

anything. I’ve been looking out of the window and staring blankly at the Delhi flyovers, the bustling markets, the busy streets. My head still resonates from the noise of the blast, the howls of the women, the painful cries of the men. I look and think—which place is next? The Metro station next to my house, the grocery market, the office Avantika goes to every day? Who will be lying on the bed I was lying on today? It is terrifying. I feel scared and alone. The horror in the eyes of people who died in front of me comes rushing back.

Every time there was a blast in Delhi, Mumbai or Hyderabad, I used to look at the news and think—it cannot happen to me or the people around me. Suddenly, everything changed. I am terrified. What if the car we are in has a bomb? I shift in my place uncomfortably. I suspect everything now. I don’t blame those guys in the US who had started hating everything Arab

 after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. When it happens to you, it is very unsettling.

‘Deb?’ Avantika says.

‘Yes, I am fine. It’s just hurting a little,’ I say.

I don’t want to share my fears with her. I know she’s scared too. Had I

died yesterday, it would not have been me who would have suffered. It would have been her, my parents and my friends. I am scared for Avantika. We enter our flat and, suddenly, I don’t ever want to leave. Neither do I want Avantika to spend a second out of my sight. I have become paranoid. I understand now why my parents used to call me fifty times every ten minutes after ten in the night to make sure I was okay. I understand why they always want me to call them after I reach office. They must have seen a lot of people dying. So, they must be living in constant fear.

Avantika switches on the television for me before going to the kitchen. She starts peeling oranges and I switch to the news channels. I never do that usually, but today is no usual day. A few metres here or there, and I would have been on the news—dead.

All channels are brimming with just one topic—the blast. There are politicians condemning the attack, angry people, crying people and the junta venting out its anger on the government. Everyone is blaming someone else for what happened. No one has come out to take the blame. I switch off the TV. I cannot watch it. The memories of the dead people and the severed limbs are too much to take. I don’t need the flashing images to add to the images already haunting my mind. I can do without the torture.

‘Deb? Is something wrong?’ she asks again. She must have noticed the pale, worried expression on my face.

‘How many people have died?’ I ask her.

‘Eighty-nine. I told you.’

‘I could have been one of them,’ I say and she looks at me. Immediately,

she has tears in her eyes. I know that she has been thinking about this. She comes to me, looks at me with love in her eyes, and hugs me. I feel wanted.

‘Please don’t say that,’ she whispers.

‘Sorry.’

I say the word but I am not. I have said nothing wrong; I could have been

one of them. Had I not forgotten my wallet in the car, I would have been appallingly close to the scooter in which the bomb had been placed and blown to tiny bits. I had been lucky. I could have been dead or, worse still,

 maimed. I can feel the tiny goosebumps on my arms as Avantika snuggles up to me. I’m sure she’s thinking the same.

I hold her close and try not to think about any of it. However, it’s really difficult not to. I shudder to think what would’ve happened to her had I died. For all her strength and confidence, she is just a baby. My baby. Had I died ...

Time passes and she drifts off to sleep in my arms. I want to wrap my arms around her and never let any harm come to her. The world is a cruel place and I’ve seen it up-close now.

I switch on the television and flip through the channels. Blood. Gore. Politicians. That’s all they show. A little later, there is a special report on the ‘spirit of Delhi’. They show how the people of Delhi are affected by the Chandni Chowk blast. The news correspondent tells us that the people of Delhi have come together in this time of need, that they are fighting the tragedy and getting over it together. Bullshit.

Getting over it? It’s more like forgetting all about it. We, as responsible citizens, are more interested in doctored naked pictures of a wannabe actress than people dying on the streets. We don’t care about blood as much as we do about flesh. We don’t have time for all that. Who would have cared had something happened to me yesterday? Avantika. Shrey. Benoy. Dad. Mom. Who else?

No one cares about what happens to anyone! It is all just a bloody façade. Every time there is a blast, they talk about the spirit of Mumbai or the spirit of Delhi and how the city never sleeps or stops. They harp about how the city moves on. The truth is that life stops only for the people who had been in the blast. For the others—they just do not care. I don’t blame them. I was on their side until yesterday. I was an uncaring Delhiite.

I’m not really sad about that. I’m just irritated. Today is just another day. And I could have been dead? That is so unfair, right? One minute, I have all my limbs, and in the next, I could have lost them? The mere thought makes me sick to the stomach. I look at Avantika, who is now sleeping in my arms. I slowly shift her into a more comfortable position and push the strands of her hair away from her radiant face. Somehow, in the last five years that we’ve been dating, I am yet to pick a single instant when she doesn’t look pretty.

She is breathtakingly beautiful. It’s almost unreal. All the things that I used to say just to score with my ex-girlfriends became true when I met

 Avantika. She is a dream. Even better; you can’t even dream of something so perfect. Plastic surgeons still can’t rival God. She is so hard to describe. Those limpid, constantly wet black eyes scream to be loved. There is nothing better than her melancholic beautiful face. She has the eyes of a one-month-old child—large and screaming for attention. A perfectly formed nose, flawless bright-pink lips and a milky-white complexion that can put Photoshop to shame. Oh hell, she is way out of my league. She is a goddamn goddess. The first time I met her, I just couldn’t look beyond her face. It was strange, as it had never happened that way. Usually, it was always the cup size that had mattered.

I turn the volume low and switch back to the news channels. The news shows have censored the images by now. There are just bloodied clothes and wailing relatives. There are no severed limbs, people crying out in pain or bleeding to death, and no one is shown collecting the burnt IDs of people. I am sure people would have spent a lot more time away from their daily soaps and looked at the news if they showed all the pain that people went through.

But I don’t blame them. I was no different. Mumbai blasts, Delhi blasts —they were all the same to me.

RIP, blast victims—a status update on a social networking site, a little prayer in my heart for those who’d lost their loved ones and I would get back to whatever I was doing. This time, it is different. I never thought it would happen to me. I was never in crowded places. Crowded places where people are blown to bits by irrational, stupid terrorists.

ISI, Lashkar-e-Taiba and other terrorist groups cloud my head. I ask the question which many have asked before me and would keep asking after me —Why? There is no answer to it. I turn off the TV in frustration and rest Avantika’s head on the pillow. I am lucky to be alive, to be in her arms again ... to be in love again. I kiss her softly on her cheek and get up.

I call Ma. I don’t remember the last time I called her. These days, the only time I talk to her or Dad is when Avantika gives me the phone. Mom and Avantika talk a lot and I feel good about it. I never tell my parents how much they mean to me. No guy does. We are men. We do not know how to express love. That’s why we buy jewellery. We do not hug our dads. Instead, we talk about cricket.

‘Ki korchho?’ I ask her. (What are you doing?)

 ‘Nothing. What happened? Is everything okay, Deb?’ I can sense the surprise in her voice. I usually never ask that. I never call my mom. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love her. Two women make my world go round—one is Avantika, the other’s my mom. The third will be Avantika Jr, I guess. But there is still a decade to go for that. I am obsessed with Avantika and our relationship. It’s been like that ever since I was in college.

‘Yes,’ I say. I have tears in my eyes. I don’t know why and I almost feel like a girl for being so emotional about it. I want to tell her that I love her. If tomorrow something happens to me, she should know that I love her.

‘Umm ...’

There is an awkward silence. This is why I never call my mom. We usually have nothing to talk about other than my eating habits, and whether I am gaining any weight.

‘Are you eating properly, Deb?’ she asks. ‘Avantika has been telling me that you skip lunches. This won’t work, Tini.’

Yeah, Tini. Like everyone, I too was given an embarrassing nickname by my mom—Tini. And somehow, she manages to use it the most whenever she is around my friends.

‘I have been eating, Ma. She is just paranoid! And you have given her this disease,’ I say. I know from experience that I should never let Mom start about food. She is obsessed with feeding me. She has happily passed that trait on to Avantika.

‘You need to eat, Tini,’ she says.

‘Whatever.’

I can hear Dad in the background. It has been almost six months since I

have met them. I miss them. It’s cool to live alone, but not all the time. I miss being irresponsible. I miss being stuffed by my mom, although Avantika is doing a good job of it. Mom knows Avantika spends a lot of time at my place.

I hang up after a while and try to sleep. As soon as I close my eyes, it all comes back to me. I try to push those gory images out of my head. I desperately need a distraction. Maybe thinking about Avantika would help; it always does, but not this time. People died. And it was just yesterday. Right in front of my eyes. Dreams crushed. Lives ended. Children lost.