Chapter Forty-Six
KIRAN
Kiran was at the hospital by five in the morning though the surgery wasn’t scheduled until eight. She had tossed and turned with dreams of Kirti whimpering that she couldn’t join them and Ma’s shouting of broken promises. She needed a moment of silence from her own thoughts, and she entered the hospital room. Ma snoozed, snoring quietly, on a cot next to the bed.
Kiran sat in the other chair and stared at her parents. Ma’s loyalty was admirable. She wanted a love like that—one where she could go to all lengths of discomfort to ensure that her partner was safe. She wondered if she and Nash could have had that but brushed the thought away as she glanced at her parents again. Even in their sleep, Baba and Ma breathed the same. Their light snores whistled in symphony.
At six on the dot, Ma stirred. She looked around and spotted Kiran, who closed her Kindle cover on her lap.
“When did you get here?”
“Just a little while ago.”
“What have you been doing?”
“I was reading.”
Ma nodded. “That used to be your answer anytime I asked you what you were doing when you were a child.”
Kiran smiled. “You should go freshen up and wash your face, Ma. It’ll be a long day. You’ll want to have some energy. I’ll stay with Baba in the meantime.”
Ma said nothing but rose, pulling a bag with her to the washroom. When she left, Kiran stood and sat on the space next to her father’s hips.
“Baba, it’s me,” she whispered into his ear in Hindi. “I’m here. You’ve been sleeping for most of the last few days. I don’t know if you’ve seen me. If you’ve known I’m here. But I am. I flew back because I didn’t want my last words from you to be telling me that I’m dead to you. I didn’t want my last memories of my parents together to be fighting with them and hanging up from across an ocean. I want you to go into this surgery and fight hard.
“You know, when I was little and I got a bad grade, I always took it hard when I didn’t do well on an exam. And you used to tell me I was a Mathur. I asked you what that meant. You told me Mathur meant we were learned warriors. Baba, I wouldn’t have become educated if it wasn’t for all you gave up. But now I need you to be the warrior… I promise if you pull through, we’ll get through everything together. Because I found Kirti. And she needs to see her baba too and hear him speak to her again. You have granddaughters who want to see you. Our family has been apart for too long. And you need to come back to us for that to happen. You can’t yell at me if you don’t wake up.” Kiran giggled and choked back a sob. “Come back to us, Baba. Fight hard.”
She kissed his forehead. Ma arrived then, clutching a small Ganesh statue—a twin statue of the one Kiran housed at her apartment in the States. She didn’t let go of it as the doctors wheeled Baba’s bed out of the room to prep him for surgery, silently following the group while murmuring prayers for her husband. Kiran held onto Baba’s hand until the last possible second.
Just as she was about to let go, she swore she felt him squeeze her fingers.
Then, they were gone.
The double doors closed behind them with a final thud.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
The second hand on the waiting room clock amplified the longer Kiran listened to it. Silence couldn’t continue any longer, or she’d lose her mind.
Over the last two hours, she’d paced, performed her positive thought ritual, tried to convince herself that Baba’s hand squeeze was a divine sign that it would be okay, told herself she should quit her job and move back to India, and had mentally written her resignation letter twelve different times.
It didn’t make the hours go by any quicker.
Finally, pushed beyond the brink of mental exhaustion, she plopped herself back into a waiting-room chair with her hands over her eyes to keep out the irritating white fluorescence from the lights.
Tick. Tock.
“Where did you go yesterday?” Ma asked after another half hour of silence.
“I–I went and saw a…friend—”
“Your father is in the hospital, and you chose to see a friend?” Ma’s voice rose an octave and a decibel.
“She came to see me.” A third voice rang out in the room.
Kirti stood at the waiting-room doors in a pale-blue sari. Her hair was pulled into a neat plait, and she held a straw bag in her hands, filled with canisters of food and, from what Kiran could tell, a few extra saris.
Ma’s jaw dropped. Her eyes reddened, and she blinked rapidly, staring at Kirti as though she had seen a ghost. Even her skin paled.
“Ma,” Kirti whispered.
Elation swept through Kiran, who wanted to prance into Kirti’s arms, cry tears of impatience and joy, and thank her for coming. But the look on her face and on Ma’s forced Kiran to remain a third party on the outskirts. She chose to stay hidden from the line of fire. This was something Kirti needed to do on her own.
Ma looked like a woman about to be thrown on a pyre. She stood. She jerked as if she was going to step toward Kirti and hug her but then thought better of it and stood back, grasping the backrest of the seat so tight her knuckles turned white.
“What are you doing here?” Ma asked quietly.
“Kiran told me Baba was having surgery. I wanted to be here.”
“You haven’t been here for twenty years.”
“Whose fault is that?” Kiran chimed in.
“Kiran,” Kirti reprimanded and shook her head, as if to say, Peace, child, don’t lose your temper. Then to Ma, “I’m here now. And I’m not going anywhere.”
Ma’s reddened eyes darted between her daughters and toward the door. For a moment, Kiran wondered if she was contemplating leaving herself. But then she sat.
Kirti sat across from her.
“Kiran, why don’t you get some chai for us?” she requested kindly.
As Kiran shot a glance behind her, the two ladies in her life had locked eyes for the first time in two decades.
She wanted to give them time to discuss anything they wanted to get off their chests. As she tried to find the canteen to buy some chai, Kiran trailed down an endless maze of hallways, conference rooms, and corridors leading to outdoor gardens. Eventually, her wandering became less deliberate, and she found herself in the main lobby again, looking up at the vast expanse of light casting down.
She wondered why the rooms themselves were so dimly lit when the lobby resembled the surface of the sun, but she was too tired to contemplate it further.
A murmur grew in the crowd, and Kiran noticed a few people pointing in awe. Most of them were poorer, dressed in shabbier saris and torn pants marred by years of dirt and grime. She followed their extended fingers, and the level of exhaustion she had hit finally peaked.
Standing in the middle of the waiting room, all eyes on the gora who stood a head taller than most of the people surrounding him, was Nash.
Kiran blinked twice. She needed to sleep if her hallucinations were this vivid. It had been well over five days since she’d gotten more than two hours of rest, and the hospital chairs weren’t doing her any favors. She closed her eyes, willing her mind to stop with the overactive games and to power through a few more hours before she could go home. She only needed to make it until she knew Baba was safely out of surgery.
“Kiran.”
Her eyes flew open.
He was really here. Disbelief filled her chest as her mouth dropped open. Her vision was hazy, but he’d started taking steps toward her. Kiran glanced at the others around her to see if they noticed the white boy moving through the lobby, and sure enough, many stared at him, in awe of his pale skin.
“Nash,” she managed before taking a running start.
She leapt into his arms, throwing her own around his neck. He pulled her right off her feet, and one of her legs bent to shift her weight as she sank into his chest.
“Are you okay? Is your dad okay?” he asked, putting her back on the floor and searching her face.
“He’s having a triple bypass right now,” she croaked out, wrung out with relief at seeing him.
“You look exhausted. Have you slept?”
She shook her head. The effort was like lifting a weight using her neck. “I’ve mostly been at the hospital. I go back to the apartment to shower…but Ma needs me. I wanted to be here.”
He brushed her greasy hair off her face. “How’s your mom?”
“A mess. We haven’t talked much. It’s just…”
Boring into her were the eyeballs of the room, and she gestured toward a less populated hallway. He followed her as she found an empty waiting room.
Closing the door behind them, she stood near him. They didn’t touch. Only inches apart, Kiran merely wanted to feel him, to know that he was breathing the same air and that he had her back on all the chaos blowing her off course. He was her lighthouse in a hurricane moving too quickly to keep up. She tried to focus on his glow and anchor herself to him instead of blowing away.
“Kiran, look at me.” He tilted her head with his fingers, and tears burned her eyes.
“What are you doing here?” The question tumbled out.
“I love you.” He said it like it was an explanation, the most obvious of reasons in the world. He said it like he was telling someone it was Tuesday or to grab an umbrella because it was raining outside. Obvious. Nonchalant. Simply the way it was.
“But what are you doing here? You live half a world away. You have a job.”
“I love you. And your father had a heart attack. You needed me. And I’m here.”
“But your clients—”
“Are taken care of. Kiran, there is nowhere I would rather be.”
She looked into his face, a face she loved more than anyone else’s in the world, and the earnestness in his expression was too much to take. Tears welled up in her already heavy eyes. She gulped to contain herself, to force the emotions back inside, but it was too late. She reined back a sob and whimpered as it made its way from her body anyway.
“Shh, baby.” Nash wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close.
Kiran breathed him in. His cologne was fresh. She gripped his shirt and buried her face in his chest, wishing she could find a home in his heart and stay there, protected.
Tears kept flowing out of Kiran, unleashing a deluge she’d kept bottled up. Nash’s hand stroked the top of her head, and his fingers ran up and down her back to quell the heaving sobs. He rested his head on hers, kissing her forehead every now and then and allowing her the space to feel something.
After a time, the cries didn’t come so violently, and she was able to step back, still grasping his shirt so he wouldn’t float too far away. She closed her eyes, a dull ache behind them and inside her head from the tears and the stress and now the relief of having someone on her side.
“Do you want to go back to the waiting room your mom is in?”
“Kirti is there too.”
Nash’s eyes widened. “You found her?”
“I couldn’t do it anymore, Nash. I didn’t want my family to be held back by the past and continue to suffer. Baba’s last words to me were that I was dead to him. No one deserves to…” She couldn’t say the word die. She was afraid the Tatastu devas—the gods Ma told her about when she was growing up and warned her were always listening to her words in order to grant them—would hear her and make them come true.
“No one deserves to go into a life-changing situation without their children by their side. No child deserves to face the prospect of a crisis without their parents knowing their love.”
“You amaze me,” he murmured. “I don’t know where you get your strength, Kiran, or your conviction about the way the world should be…but I’m so proud of you for finding her. You’re right. The patients I’ve seen at the hospital are always regretting words that were unsaid and bonds that were broken. Your father—no father—deserves that.”
His expression changed as he said those words, like he was having an epiphany of his own. She brought him close again. He held her up.
“How’s your mom taking all of this? God, your family’s dealing with a lot of moving parts right now.”
“They’ve shouted. Been in silence. Scratched more wounds into each other. But I hope they find their way. I hope we all do.”
“Maybe I should wait to make an appearance. This isn’t a good time.”
Kiran wanted to argue, to tell him she needed him and that his presence would be helpful…but a quiet voice in her soul told her to agree. This wasn’t the time to ambush Ma. Kirti was enough of a shock. Baba was still in surgery. This day was already too much.
She nodded. “Where are you staying?”
“I got a hotel room at the Marriott near the airport. Actually, Payal got it for me.”
“Payal?” Kiran looked at him quizzically.
“Apparently your friends are fans of the setup.”
Kiran giggled through her teary eyes. “Go rest… I’ll call the hotel if anything changes.”
“I’ll come by the second you need me.”
Kiran trusted his word.
“Nash.”
“What?”
She wanted to express her gratitude, tell him that she loved him and that he was everything—that this trip meant everything—but she couldn’t find the words to accurately convey the wave of thankfulness she had.
Instead, she kissed him. His free hand rested at the small of her back, just under the hem of her shirt. Her tongue explored his mouth, and her fingers toyed with the hair on the back of his head as she brought his head closer to hers, moving together.
When they pulled apart, they both were breathless. Nash’s lips remained millimeters from Kiran’s, and she could still taste him on hers. His hot breath tickled her face, and she didn’t move her hands from his chest and the back of his head, tempted instead to pull him close again and make up for lost time. He rested his forehead against hers and closed his eyes.
“If you do that again, I’ll never leave,” he whispered to her.
“Don’t leave,” Kiran whispered back.
“Okay. I’ll stay.”
“Go get some rest.”
He kissed her forehead. “I’ll be back.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
As they left the room and turned in opposite directions, Kiran’s heart, though still heavy, was unburdened of one weight. Being less alone in the world and knowing someone was behind her to catch her if she fell served as an antidote to every stress. She stopped at the canteen on her way back to the waiting room where Ma and Kirti sat, picking up two chais.
When she entered the room, Ma and Kirti were sitting in chairs opposite each other. Neither was looking at the other. Ma’s arms were crossed. Kirti stared at the floor as though she hoped it would open up—but a trace of determination crossed her face as Kiran walked in. Ma, on the other hand, was unimpressed.
“Where did you go to get those chais—Hyderabad?” Ma snapped as Kiran walked in.
Kiran silently handed her a chai and offered the other to Kirti.
“Thanks, Chottu.” Kirti held onto Kiran’s hand in gratitude.
Ma looked up at Kiran’s nickname, and her sight drifted to her daughters’ joined hands. Her expression remained neutral, but Kiran wondered if she’d imagined the softened corners of Ma’s eyes.
“How are the girls?” Kiran asked.
“They understand that I need to be here. Gautam—”
Ma grimaced.
“—took leave so that he can spend time with them.”
Kiran sat next to her, crossing her legs and resting her chin in her hands. “I’m sure Anjali asked questions.”
“She wanted to know why she couldn’t come, but she understood when I said it was something I had to take care of first.”
“If you’re going to talk, you might as well do it out loud. Secrets are unnecessary. We are numb to your deceptions now.”
“You have two granddaughters. I was telling Kiran they are at home.”
Ma took a sharp breath.
Kirti reached in her bag but hesitated. Kiran nudged her, gesturing at it with her chin to encourage her. Kirti pulled an envelope out.
“I have photographs if you want to see, Ma.”
Ma considered it. But her decision was a split second too short for it to come off as nonchalant. She reached out her hand without meeting her daughters’ eyes, instead glancing at the clock on the wall.
“The older one is Radha.” Kirti’s voice shook. “She is eighteen years old. The younger is Anjali. She’s nine.”
Ma held the photographs gently in front of her, pulling them closer to her face to see the detail. Kiran watched her lips part as she lingered on Anjali’s face and then Radha’s. Ma ran her nail-bitten fingers over the photo.
“She looks like Kiran.” Ma noted the resemblance so quietly that both girls had to lean in to hear her.
“She does. Every time I looked at her, from the day she was born, I noticed the same face.” Kirti paused. “In a way, seeing her grow up has given me peace, because it’s been like watching Kiran instead.”
Kiran turned to her sister, surprised. “I didn’t know that.”
“What is she like?” Ma asked. “And…Anjali.” Saying their names was an effort. Ma swallowed and forced her face into an expression of neutrality.
“Radha is serious. Very studious. Sometimes I think that in my attempt to understand all her problems and be supportive, she caught on that I was trying to make up for the lies I told…the understanding I didn’t have. She’s a smart child. Anjali still has her innocence. She has a lot of energy.”
“She’s a firecracker.” Kiran laughed. “Let’s not mince words.”
“So were you. And look how you turned out. I have high hopes for both of them.”
Ma listened in stony silence. The trip down memory lane about Kiran’s childhood ought to have brought Ma’s proud moments to the forefront, but instead, she receded into her shell. Kiran noted that even after only a few days, she had aged, and it had nothing to do with the lack of sleep or the stress. Her hair was thinner now—only a fraction of the thick mane she sported as Kirti and Kiran grew up. Her red sari bore faint turmeric stains from her long days in the kitchen. Her skin had freckles from the time she spent in the sun when she worked in the garden in Ramnagar but had grown a translucence that could only be associated with remaining indoors in Delhi. Her heels were cracked from barefoot days on cement floors, and her feet, with their unpainted toenails, were swollen now from sitting and waiting for hours.
Perhaps Kirti had hoped for a warmer response to the mention of Ma’s granddaughters. After all, children mended the most damaged fences. So many marriages had begun with animosity, only to be smoothed over once parents became grandparents and noticed their own children experiencing motherhood and fatherhood for the first time. Children were the bearers of innocence and hope—and they brought those to even the darkest of places.
Kiran noticed her sister’s shoulders fall an inch and a quiet sigh escape her. For the first time this morning, Kirti was dejected. Ma and Kirti had resumed their game of observing two halves of the room and acting as though the other wasn’t occupying the same space. Anytime they appeared to let their gaze fall on the same imaginary line between them at the same time, their heads snapped back to facing opposite directions.
Another hour passed in quiet.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Mathur?” A nurse came in.
The three of them rose and met her at the door.
“My daughter.” Ma gestured at Kiran. Then she saw Kirti. “Daughters,” she corrected herself. She smacked her lips together as though she were tasting how it sounded.
Kirti and Kiran tried not to smile.
“We had a complication—” The nurse’s words snapped their focus into place.
“What complication?” Kiran interrupted.
“We are still in surgery with your father. It may take a few more hours. The doctor will speak with you afterward.”
Kiran’s heart fell. “Can you give me some details?”
“No, miss. Unfortunately I cannot tell you any information as the surgery is still going on. We wanted to give you the courtesy for the sake of time.”
Kiran nodded. Kirti returned to her chair, dejected, and Ma stood in the same spot long after the nurse had disappeared.
“Ma, please, sit down,” Kiran soothed. “We have to wait. Keep hope.”
In silence, Ma sat on the chair next to her, farther from the two of them and isolated.
How much longer would this go?
Kiran pulled her phone from the pocket. The nurse said there was a complication and it’ll take a few hours. I don’t know what happened.
Nash texted back immediately, I’ll be there in a bit.
Kiran bent her head, finally resigning herself to clasping her hands together and resting her forehead on them. Her elbows sat on her knees, and she tried to pray for strength, for Baba’s recovery, for anyone and anything to hear what her family had to ask for. Kirti glanced over and rubbed her back soothingly, her own chin in her other hand.
When Ma spoke after a half hour of quiet, both girls startled.
“For years, I had hoped I would someday see the two of you holding hands and being sisters,” Ma said quietly, not lifting her eyes. “No one deserves to lose their daughter. Sisters should always be close.”
“Ma?” Kiran wasn’t sure she had heard her mother correctly.
“When I first gave birth to Kirti, the entire village filled up with her cries,” Ma recalled. The expression on her face was a million miles away. “She had such a set of lungs. She was only a few hours old when the jyotish was brought to cast her horoscope. He said, ‘This child will be your fame, your kirti. She will bring your name far and wide with her kindness. And there will be two of your children, both destined to change lives.’
“We waited and waited for Kiran’s birth, but it took much longer than expected. When we finally found out we were expecting another, Kirti was already fifteen years old. At that point, your baba’s parents had passed away, and I only had my father left and he was unhealthy. We desperately wanted a boy. Every jyotish was dragged to our home. Any swamiji or rishi who passed through Ramnagar was asked to make a stop at our house. Each and every one of them told us we would be blessed with a boy to carry on our name and to bring light. Imagine our surprise when, at the crack of dawn, we had another baby girl. A calm child who hardly cried and gazed at us with eyes that saw into our souls.
“Like we’d done with Kirti, a jyotish cast the horoscope. He said this child would be our ray of light. That’s why you were named ‘Kiran.’ He said you were born at the most auspicious moment as the sun came up and that like Suryadev, you would be brilliant at all you touched. Your father was quiet. I don’t know if he was disappointed that we had a girl or worried about our future. He said nothing. He escorted the astrologer out of the house, and he was gone for a few minutes.
“When he returned, he told me, ‘It doesn’t matter that we don’t have a son. We don’t have to try again. We have our glory and our light, and this is enough. We were told they would bring us both these things, and that’s all we need. Let’s trust God. This child will have the freedom in life to pursue anything she chooses, just like a boy would have.’ It scared me. How could we let our girls have so many things when we couldn’t afford anything ourselves? But I trusted your baba and what he was saying. I trusted God. That was why Kirti was allowed to go to classes and why, Kiran, you were granted the permission to study outside Ramnagar and Delhi. It was your baba who decided that you should not be held back.
“And Kirti’s kindness was all the glory we needed as Kiran grew up. Every day, another aunty would tell me a story of how she needed help choosing vegetables or bringing them home, and Kirti would be the first to assist. By the time you were nineteen or twenty, Kirti, I never had to lift a finger before you’d already done the tasks at the house for me and twelve others for the neighbors. I remember once I went to pick up jeera from the spice vendor, and when I returned, you had washed and hung all the laundry, finished a lesson with Kiran, cut vegetables for Chaudry Aunty next door when her arthritis hurt, and done the evening sweep of the floor. And when I entered the house, you asked if I wanted chai because I’d had a long day. You were my right hand. And then you were gone.”
“You let her go, Ma… How could you let her go?”
“We worried about your future too, Kiran. We couldn’t move away. We knew Gautam would take care of Kirti—our responsibilities as her parents were finished with her when we got her married. It’s our culture. She is a member of Gautam’s house. And we tried to protect both of you from the brunt of people’s opinions by letting her live her life, separately but safely. But we still had responsibilities toward you. You were so little.”
Kiran was torn between sympathy for her mother’s plight and residual anger. Kirti hadn’t spoken, soaking in her mother’s words.
“You were wrong,” she said quietly. “Ma, I was wrong too. I never should have threatened to run away. You were right that Gautam would give me a good life. But it was a lonely one. We had no one to support our decisions. His parents got ill and died soon after our wedding. My daughters grew up without grandparents and without their masi.”
“Losing Kiran to her American ways was like losing my left hand. Suddenly she left all the things we taught her behind and decided to put herself first,” Ma said softly. “I am helpless. Now, if your baba… I am alone.”
Kiran wiped her face with the back of her hand as Kirti did the same with her pallu. “Ma, you aren’t alone. We’re right here. We have a chance to rewrite everything! We don’t live in Ramnagar anymore. We can move forward.”
“How do you catch up on two decades?”
“By not looking back. We’ve lost enough time,” Kirti said.
Ma gazed at her daughters, considering the weight of what they’d said. They were together at last. Her dreams had come true. She had to act now and put the past behind them. But Kiran knew that history could weigh even the lightest of people down, and she was afraid Ma would give in to damage and call it irreversible.
Before Ma had a chance to respond, however, a doctor arrived.
“Can I speak to the person in charge of Mr. Mathur’s medical decisions?”
“That’s me,” Kiran said.
“Ma’am, can I speak to you in private?” The man, evidently a student, looked at Kirti and Ma in their saris and fidgeted uncomfortably. “Perhaps we can step into a hallway and discuss your father’s condition.”
Kiran nodded and then looked at her sister and mother. “I’ll be right back. He wants to talk about the surgery. Let me find out what’s going on, and I’ll be back to let you know.”
They both nodded, worried looks on their faces as they let her go. Kiran followed the doctor down the hallway, catching an entering Nash’s eye as she passed the main lobby. Nash immediately followed. The doctor knocked on a number of doors to conference rooms, but all were occupied. Instead, he led her to a quiet part of the hallway where only an orderly stood, folding bedsheets.
“Is this man…” The resident faltered.
“He’s with our family. Please speak,” Kiran ordered.
“Ma’am…he flatlined…”