Your father said, ‘You know why.’

  ‘He never hurt anyone. Just few words,’ argued your mother.

  Your mother quietly left the room. There were no angry tears, no desperate pleas. It seemed like that phase of urgent, pointed, debilitating pain was over. I had seen your parent’s look on Mumma—the one when you have accepted that the pain is a part of you—after Papa left us. You carry it to your death. Mumma tried her best to deal with it. She thought if she could find people to talk with about what she was going through, it would lessen the blow. Men—colleagues, neighbours, old friends—they all came. The pattern was unmissable. They would tell her they would come with their family and then turn up alone, smelling of Old Spice and Denim cologne, freshly shaved. They would all ask if I was home. Unlike Mumma, I knew why they were there. A picture, a smell, a gust of wind—anything could reduce her to tears. And she cried and sobbed and wailed in front of every one of these men. My mother is gorgeous, Gautam. She’s a sight. And yet, when she cried, her screams seemed to stain the world with grief. The men shrivelled to half their size in front of her open, wild hair, her red veiny eyes. Her grief during the first few months was infectious, an epidemic. Everyone came out feeling they had lost something. Every man went back with their nefarious intentions unfulfilled. Some came back again to try their luck. Mumma, having deemed them useless in unburdening her pain, would ask me to tell the wolves she wasn’t at home. I would refuse because I didn’t want to talk to her. I had my own shit to deal with. And she was among all the people I blamed for our fate. I blamed the entire fucking world.

  ‘What do you need?’ your father asked once the uncomfortable air cleared.

  ‘Your son had a troubling presence online. People remember that sort of thing. Every time we post about his campaign there’s a lot of backlash. No one likes your son . . . even now.’

  He stared right through me, and muttered the words, ‘He was sick, his brain . . . it was rotting. He—’

  ‘We need something to tell the donors. Something that contrasts with what people know about him,’ I said.

  Your father looked listlessly at me.

  ‘I will be more specific. Let’s start from the day he was taken for the surgery. He must have known there’s a chance that he wouldn’t wake up. So if everything went well, did he want to do something specific? What did he say before he was taken inside?’ I asked.

  There was a long pause. Your father steeled himself and then said, ‘You have read the tweets . . . he was sick. It was his disease talking.’

  He needed some time, so he got up and left me alone with you. I sat there looking at you. It seemed hard to believe that you hadn’t opened your eyes in months. It looked like you would wake up this instant and start talking.

  I wondered what made you who you had become and how you were like before that. We all have stories. You have yours and I have mine. I will tell you mine someday. As I sat there, I felt an urge that I didn’t feel before, not this strongly, not even when I was watching Rajni cry. I wanted you to live. I wanted you to survive this so you could wake up, sit next to me and talk to me.

  Ananth Khatri

  If it were not for Saraansh’s stupidly expensive car, we would have been chased down the road by the guards outside Polaris Technologies. It has been three hours that we have been waiting for Karan Jaslok.

  ‘What does your father do again?’ I ask to pass the time.

  ‘He sells buttons, I told you earlier. Zara? UCB? Jack & Jones? The buttons you see. They are all manufactured by my father. My brother designs them.’

  ‘That must be tough,’ I say.

  ‘He works . . . oh, you were making fun!’ he says.

  ‘Finding different ways to punch four holes in a plastic disc requires vision. I get it. You must be really proud,’ I say. ‘There he is.’

  Karan Jaslok’s limp isn’t pronounced but it’s there if you’re looking for it.

  ‘He’s good looking, can’t deny that,’ says Saraansh softly.

  Saraansh had insisted he needed to see and talk to Karan Jaslok, Mohini’s first boyfriend on his own. He thought I had lied on the mail trying to make things more dramatic than they really were. He was also sure I had missed out on details. ‘I want to do this right,’ he kept telling me as if I didn’t want the same thing. Although I have started to like him, this creative process is going to be fraught with trouble.

  ‘Go through it again,’ he says as we trail Karan Makhija’s motorcycle though the streets of Connaught Place. ‘Don’t miss any of the details. Tell me everything you remember.’

  ‘She was in the eleventh standard, must have been fourteen–fifteen. Karan was nineteen, older, second year of college, someone much wiser. He was much more handsome than he’s now. Unlike other boys around her who were struggling, he had settled into his height. He had left puberty long behind. He knew of the strength in his arms, the energy, the sinewy muscles, the voice. His facial hair wasn’t light but hard and grew vigorously. Karan was a man. He’d joined a call center in the second year of college. Every day he used to wear freshly ironed shirts, tuck them in neatly in his pleated trousers, and leave for work. A bus with similarly dressed people used to pick him up. Mohini’s school bus and his shared the same stop. That’s where Mohini first saw him. Despite the other men in the bus, it was his face that stood out for her.’

  ‘For someone who doesn’t like the entertainment vertical you paint quite a picture. Does thinking of him make you jealous?’

  ‘It shreds my heart,’ I tell him.

  ‘Bro,’ he says and looks at me with pity.

  ‘On that bus stop, there used to be other girls from her school too. They would also notice Karan. The fear of losing Karan slowly gripped Mohini. She started to sleep uneasy. She was always worrying if one of the girls would roll down their socks or hike up their skirts to catch Karan’s attention. To Karan’s credit, he never once looked up from his books. She would never be that girl—her love story wouldn’t start with looking at herself in the mirror thinking if more legs will draw her lover’s attention.’

  ‘Did you get all of this from Mohini? Her mother?’ asks Saraansh.

  ‘I have met Karan before today,’ I tell him.

  ‘Of course you have. Continue,’ says Saraansh.

  ‘Days passed, then weeks and then months, and yet he kept looking at his books. He never once looked up. He never missed work, she never missed school. Through fevers and chills, she would be there, at the bus stop to look at him before her day started. He had become her superstition. Like some look for two mynas, or a mail van for luck, she used to look for him.’

  ‘Do you believe in the mail van too, bro?’ asks Saraansh.

  I nod.

  ‘Go on,’ he says.

  ‘He looked up one day. Their eyes met. Once and then again, and then every day. On some days, she thought it was all in her head because why would someone like him look at someone like her. She would spend the entire day basking in that one gaze of his in the morning. She would build lifetimes starting from that one look, one gaze.’

  ‘That’s awfully romantic.’

  ‘And then one day, he didn’t come. His bus came, stopped, waited and left. An irrational fear gripped her. She felt scared; she thought something had happened to him. Why would he not come? She didn’t board her school bus. She turned back not knowing where she would go. She first wandered around her colony, and then the neighbourhood, looking for him. Was he sick? Was he . . . dead? “Just keep him alive,” she prayed. For a few moments she thought it was her wrongful desire for him that made him pay for his life. She had always felt guilty that she loved him, that she was keeping this from her parents. Things a teenager would imagine.’

  ‘We have all been there,’ says Saraansh.

  ‘She promised to a god, just any god, that she wouldn’t ever look at him, not wait for him, not think of him, if he was alive. She cut a deal with god. Little did she know that in the next few minutes, death would stare right at her.’

  ‘You didn’t write this in the mail,’ says Saraansh irritably as if I had put a spanner in his plans. ‘Continue.’

  I continue, ‘He was there. In a crisp white kurta, his lips slightly open, the name of Ram on his lips, and shouldering a fourth of a dead body. He chanted. Ram Naam Satya Hai, Ram Naam Satya Hai. Their eyes met. It might have been a second or a lifetime, it was hard to say, but when she wrenched herself free from the chokehold of time, true to her word, she turned, and she left. She promised to hang her head low if that’s what it took to not look at him again. She didn’t know if she boarded the bus the next day or the day after that. For days after that she kept hearing the chants in her head, “Ram Naam Satya Hai”, over and over and over again. A few more days passed, and she learned Karan’s chacha had died in an accident. Karan was driving the motorcycle. He had narrowly escaped death. It built her resolve.’

  ‘That’s hard,’ says Saraansh.

  ‘Mohini was convinced that it was Ram, the unknown god she prayed to, who had saved Karan. Mohini’s parents weren’t religious but, in that moment, she turned into a believer. She was so young after all.’

  ‘You don’t have to justify someone’s faith,’ says Saraansh.

  ‘Mohini downloaded wallpapers of Ram who had saved Karan, learned a few chants to thank him. A few days later, she went to the temple near her house. That’s where she saw him again. She tried walking away but he held her hand. He looked at her again. And it broke her resolve, the deal she cut. And that’s where they came to be. In the three months that Karan and Mohini were together, Mohini surrendered everything. Karan destroyed her in return. All the grief, the guilt, the hate, the anger that he had for himself for surviving the accident, he unloaded on her. He abused her verbally and physically, broke her, closed his fist around her life and choked her. She wasn’t allowed to have friends, she wasn’t allowed time for herself, Karan was to be her everything. Mohini forgave everything, accepted everything as a part of the great love. Karan was a man in pain. He needed to let it out of his system.’

  ‘How did it end?’

  ‘Uncle could sense something was wrong. It didn’t take him long to find out about Karan. He kept quiet for a week and then two, kept it from Mohini’s mother who wouldn’t have allowed this. His daughter needed to navigate these battles on her own. But his resolve broke when he knew that Mohini wasn’t the only girl Karan was with. Mohini didn’t believe her father at first. Her father who knew everyone around the neighbourhood tried to tell her that Karan and his chachu weren’t close. That Karan’s pain was an excuse.’

  ‘What happened when she did?’ asks Saraansh.

  ‘She thought there was some mistake. She stopped going to school, talking to her friends, eating, drinking or bathing. Uncle saw her shed her innocence, her childhood like a robe, like a snake’s skin. The veins in her heart constricted, her heart grew old.’

  My heart sinks thinking of the details—now that I’m in the story.

  ‘Mohini was in the school hockey team. She was brilliant with the stick. She picked one up. Her father followed her to Karan’s house.’

  ‘What did she do?’ asks Saraansh.

  ‘What’s most humiliating in Delhi? Ghar mein ghus kar maa-baap ke saamne pitai (Getting beaten up in front of your parents). Uncle held off Karan’s screaming parents. Mohini wielded her hockey stick like a mace. Three hairline fractures in his hands, two broken ribs. When she pushed him off the stairs, his broken femur jutted out of his thigh. That’s the limp Karan carries today.’

  ‘No police complaints?’ asks Saraansh.

  ‘Uncle was in the lock-up for a week. But don’t pity him. He had made friends with the constables and then the inspector within the first day,’ I say. ‘Also, he was the father of a girl who had been violated and cheated on. The policemen quashed the FIR. The next week, they were all at Mohini’s house and Uncle cooked biryani for them. He remained friends with the police guys long after. Mohini, in a number of ways is a carbon copy, cut from the same cloth, a little part of him.’

  Karan parks his motorcycle. He enters the coffee shop. We enter after him, not particularly sure why. He takes a seat at the corner. There’s a view so it’s sure to be a date. When Karan spots me, he gets up.

  ‘Now what?’ he says, a bit scared.

  It’s been a few months since I last saw him. Saraansh and I sit in front of him. He shifts in his seat, trying to get up and leave.

  ‘It will be better if you keep sitting down,’ I say.

  ‘Look—’

  ‘Shut up till you’re asked questions,’ I say. ‘This is Saraansh. Saraansh, this is Karan.’

  Karan sits down with a hobble. The piercing pain of the bone cutting through skin visible in his eyes. He’s scared. I tell him I’m not here to beat him up.

  He says, ‘I told you everything. Now what do you want from me?’

  ‘Is he crying a bit?’ Saraansh asks me.

  ‘I’m not—’

  ‘Calm down, Karan. We won’t take long. Do you want something to drink? Coffee?’

  ‘Water,’ he mumbles.

  Saraansh waves down the waiter and asks for water.

  ‘Breathe, there’s nothing to be scared of,’ I say.

  ‘What . . . what . . . do you want,’ Karan stammers.

  ‘Saraansh here is making a movie on Mohini. He thinks I might have embellished a few details in her story. He wants the truth. So everything you told me about her, you, about her father, he needs to hear it again. He needed to see the boy who made Mohini believe in god.’

  Saraansh spots the fear in Karan’s eyes and helpfully says, ‘We are going to change names of course. That is if you help me, or—’

  Karan hesitates.

  ‘You don’t have a choice,’ I tell him.

  Karan starts and tells Saraansh exactly what he told me a few months ago.

  ‘She saw me at the bus stop . . .’

  ‘Don’t miss the details,’ says Saraansh.

  Karan continues. Saraansh orders a round of coffee for everyone. Karan’s girlfriend comes and we make her sit with us.

  ‘Can we not—’

  I glare him down and he doesn’t protest.

  She hears the story too. Both Saraansh and I hope this will be her last date.

  When he finishes and we leave the coffee shop, Saraansh asks me, ‘He seemed scared. Did you beat him up too?’

  ‘I’m not a part of the story,’ I say.

  Anusha Sardana

  Rachita and Sarita would have lost their bearings with me dragging my feet on the Gautam case had Manoj Kumar’s campaign not reached its completion. When it did, Manoj came to the office and made a huge deal crying and hugging me, telling me that they will always keep me in their prayers. They also came bearing gifts—clothes—which of course I didn’t accept. I kept the card Rajni made for me. It warmed the cockles of my heart a bit, I won’t deny that. I believe this was the kind of thing Rachita used to get off on—being a savior. I was sure there was a little board in her house with cards from sick children thanking her.

  ‘Smile a little,’ said Rachita.

  If Rachita thought Rajni’s campaign was a success and a reason to smile, she had to be naive. We collected Rs 15 lakh from 900 donors. Just 900 donors out of the hundreds of thousands of people who have money to spare. That’s all it took to save Rajni’s life, just 900 people tapping away at their laptops, feeling a bit cheeky and generous and superior on that day. It was less than what showrooms of Zara or UCB make in a day.

  But how can you just think of Rajni and not of the thousands like her who die every day because 900 people didn’t come together for them? Did their parents—with their daughters cremated—stumble upon the WeDonate website later and go, oh no, we should have known of this website before? They could have found 900 people to help them? Why has it come to that? Why do we have to seek out kindness?

  The medical team now saw me as an asset, and invited me to their table quite a few times. I had to refuse because that’s a stupid waste of time.

  Sarita had given me a bunch of other cases to start working on simultaneously and it had kept me up at nights. I had been making minor adjustments to Gautam’s campaign but every time we posted it from WeDonate’s accounts, hate instead of donations started to stream in. The comment section used to fill up almost instantly. The post would be reported and the hate-comments would spill over to the other posts as well. We would have to take the posts down. Sometimes it felt like some of the accounts were fake accounts but we didn’t have means to check.

  I was dozing off at my table when Vishwas ji tapped on my shoulder and kept a big box on my table.

  This is what I was waiting for!

  I had been nagging Gautam’s mother to send everything there was of Gautam—pictures, report cards, letters—to me. They had taken so much time I thought they had decided against sending it.

  The box was taped and it took me ten minutes to get inside.

  There was a small note inside.

  This is everything about him—Aunty.

  There were thirteen photo albums twice as thick as my arm, four academic files, two medical files and a bunch of files spilling with receipts. They were pretty thorough.

  As I stacked them on the desk, others in the medical team turned towards me again, smiling.

  ‘Good to see you have started enjoying being in the medical team,’ said Rachita.

  I didn’t correct her, didn’t tell her I plan to stay only till I find out everything about Gautam.

  I opened the first album. The print pictures were in pristine quality, meticulously catalogued. I started to flip through the album.

  Gautam was born an ugly child. Wrinkly skin, a scowl on his face, and not a sliver of hair on his head, a bit like a dried raisin. In the arms of his parents, he looked adopted. Yet, his parents seemed to be obsessed with him. There were a lot of pictures. I flipped through them.

  A couple of months passed. He slowly filled up and started looking more human, more baby-like. His parents never looked into the camera, always towards him, their smiles bright, their grasp tighter. There were hundreds of pictures of him lying on the bed, at first supine, and then on his belly.