Till the Last Breath . . . Read online

  Kajal loved Dushyant with whatever she had. Their relationship wasn’t one of the two-hormone-charged-college-students type, but of two mature people who saw themselves together for the rest of their lives. When they lay on the open grounds of their college late in the evening, his rough, gym-scarred fingers wrapped around hers, she felt complete. As evenings turned into nights, nights into days, and days back into evenings, their love for each other grew.

  Kajal learnt to overlook Dushyant’s little flaws. Dushyant always said Kajal had none. Kajal always smiled, even when she felt pushed to the edge by her control-freak boyfriend.

  ‘Do you think this will last?’ Kajal said as Dushyant wrapped his hand around hers in a movie hall.

  ‘How can it not?’ Dushyant said, and brushed her ears with his lips. He had done that many times since the first occasion, but Kajal still felt the chills run down her spine like the first time. Dushyant wasn’t Kajal’s first boyfriend. But he was the one she would remember forever; she was sure of that. His touch, the things he said in her ear whenever they were in the back alley of the dark library, the lingering feeling of his hands on her bare stomach, his loving fingers on her creamy inner thighs, the wet, gentle touch of his tongue on her ears … she would never get over them.

  ‘You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me,’ Dushyant said as soon as an action sequence ended in the movie and there was silence. The conviction in his voice was very unsettling; it often made her wonder what would happen if, God forbid, they ever broke up.

  ‘And still you can’t quit drinking and smoking for me?’

  ‘I have cut it down a lot.’

  ‘You need a cigarette every hour, Dushyant,’ she said. ‘You will kill yourself.’

  ‘I am trying. It will take time. You just can’t let it go overnight,’ Dushyant retorted irritably. Kajal never liked to talk about his drinking problem. She loved him, so she had to. But she had had enough. The steroids he took as bodybuilding supplements, the marijuana, the never-ending cigarettes … his addictions kept piling up. She didn’t know where to begin.

  ‘If you loved me enough, you would have stopped by now.’

  ‘I have stopped taking steroids,’ he defended himself.

  ‘That’s because it’s been months since you have been to the gym. I don’t like to see you destroy yourself. I hope you understand that. I have nothing to gain out of restricting you from your addictions. It’s just that I don’t want anything to happen to you.’

  ‘Nothing is going to happen to me. Okay, fine,’ he said. ‘You stop talking to Varun. I will stop smoking. That’s a fair deal?’

  ‘What? How’s that even connected?’

  ‘You’re addicted to Varun. I am addicted to my cigarettes. You leave him, I’ll quit smoking. I am not comfortable with you being friends with your ex-boyfriend and you’re not comfortable with my smoking habit. It sounds fair to me.’

  ‘You talk to Smita too, Dushyant. I have never pointed my finger at that.’

  ‘Fine, I will stop talking to her. I never call her anyway. But you do call Varun. There are times you put my call on hold to pick up his. Sometimes you talk till the dead of night or early morning. What do I make of all this? If you need more friends, why not someone else? Why do you have to be friends with your ex-boyfriend, of all people?’ Dushyant accused.

  It wasn’t the first time Dushyant was being paranoid about Kajal still being friends with Varun—her best friend for the longest time and a boyfriend for two years.

  ‘You’re being childish. I have told you a million times that there is nothing between us. He is just a friend and will always be,’ Kajal asserted. She thought about all the times Dushyant had got drunk and harped on about how he hated Varun with every cell in his body.

  ‘I don’t think so. Why don’t you just accept that you still have feelings for him?’ He shrugged, trying to act as if he didn’t care. Kajal knew he did. It didn’t take long for Dushyant to change from being nonchalant about something to start breaking things.

  ‘I don’t. He is a friend. I’ve known him for fifteen years. How can I just stop talking to him?’

  ‘Why can’t you? He dumped you. He was dating someone else while he was still dating you. I don’t understand how you can forgive him. Don’t you have a speck of self-respect? I just don’t like the fact that you have forgiven him so easily. How could he do that to you? He doesn’t even respect you,’ Dushyant grumbled.

  The movie ended and they exited the movie hall. Kajal felt odd as Dushyant walked in front of her and didn’t even hold the door open. Clearly, he wasn’t pleased.

  ‘Our relationship was not working. I don’t blame him,’ she reasoned.

  ‘You don’t blame him? You spent days crying for him.’

  ‘I spent days crying because he left. I felt alone and lonely. Not because I missed him as a boyfriend but because I missed him as a friend. I had no one to go to.’

  ‘And now that you have me, you still miss him? How does that work? You have a boyfriend. You shouldn’t need him,’ Dushyant argued as they entered a coffee shop. All this time he walked three steps ahead of her, not meeting her eye and behaving like they weren’t together.

  The waiter promptly rushed towards them and Dushyant swatted him away rudely. The shocked waiter lingered on.

  ‘Water,’ Kajal indicated to the waiter. ‘And a cappuccino for him.’

  Dushyant picked up the menu and acted as if the conversation was over.

  ‘He means nothing to me. Believe me. He is just a friend. And it doesn’t matter if I talk to him. I love you and nothing changes that.’

  ‘Well. I am fine. Whatever. You talk to him, you sleep with him. I don’t care.’

  ‘That’s just unfair.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Dushyant said. ‘Can we not talk about this?’

  Dushyant didn’t bring up the topic again that evening. The rest of the evening, he was rude to her. They went back to his friend’s flat and slept there. Dushyant was rough with her that night. For a change, they weren’t making love, they were having sex. There were no intermittent, passionate love-yous exchanged during the course. There were just grunts and groans. It was almost like he wanted to hurt her physically. He didn’t hug her to sleep. Kajal hoped he would be okay the next day, but it only became worse.

  The next evening, Dushyant was drunk out of his wits again. Old Monk. Smirnoff. Chivas Regal. Nail-polish remover. Iodex. He called Kajal and told her, ‘You love him, I love this! I will never quit drinking or smoking!’ He called her names, abused her family and Varun, and disconnected the call. Later that night, Dushyant’s friends called her to give her the address of the hospital he was admitted to. He had passed out and was frothing at the mouth. Kajal filled out the paperwork in the hospital the next day and got him back to the hostel. It was the first time she’d had to bring him back from the hospital that month. Within that month, it happened thrice. Each subsequent time, it was worse. By now, Kajal was used to his druken tantrums. The abuses, the name-calling, the threats—she had become used to everything. It was the price for true love, she told herself. There wasn’t a fourth time.

  A few days later, he crossed a line he shouldn’t have. Her patience was tested, and she didn’t think she had the strength to carry on. She vowed she would never go back to him.

  Kajal lay with her head on the pillow, her thoughts going back to every time Dushyant had said they would last and that he would never hurt her. She believed in him. It was all lies.

  The memories of the day they had broken up were imprinted on her brain, and she knew she would never forget what had happened.

  That day, Kajal’s phone had been lying unattended and he had seen pictures and text messages that were more than a year old. He had not reacted at first. But as the night progressed, he started to get drunk. And angry. He hadn’t talked much. Shot after shot was downed. His eyes were bloodshot. Later that night, after an argument, he had struck Kajal on her face while he cried and howled
like an animal. Everyone, friends of both Dushyant and Kajal, had watched helplessly as she fell and hit the chair, reeling from the impact of his heavy hand on her face. He had locked himself in a room. All his friends had banged on the door relentlessly, scared that he might overdose inside. Kajal had pleaded with him to open the door. He had let her inside. There were no words exchanged. For the first time, Dushyant had forced himself on her. He had paid no regard to her cries and pounded her with disdain. He had treated her worse than a whore and violated her repeatedly. Once done, he had rolled over, drunk from the bottle of vodka, and passed out. A crying Kajal had left the flat and gone back home. She had texted Dushyant telling him they were over and he was dead to her. For the next six days, he had kept calling her. With every missed call, Kajal’s temper had risen. Her decision to stay away from him had strengthened. Tired and angry, she had told him that she had never loved him and that she was thinking of getting back with Varun. The calls had stopped immediately.

  Again, she had no one to talk to. After fiddling with her phone for hours, she dialled Varun’s number. You have me; you don’t need him, Dushyant used to tell her. Lies. ‘Hi, Varun,’ Kajal said, fighting her tears.

  ‘Hey? Long time. Where have you been? You don’t pick up my calls, you don’t call me back? I dropped you about a million texts. What’s the problem?’

  ‘Dushyant never liked you, you know that, right?’

  ‘Yes. I never liked him either. He asked you to stop talking to me, didn’t he? That narrow-minded bastard. I don’t know what you’re doing with him. Really, he is worse than the Taliban,’ Varun joked.

  ‘Yes, he asked me to stay away from you, but it’s okay. No boyfriend likes the ex-boyfriends of their girls.’

  ‘But your guy is very childish. He is immature and hot-tempered. He is not right for you,’ Varun preached like he always did.

  Kajal choked on her words.

  ‘Are you there?’ Varun asked. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, we broke up a few days back.’

  ‘Oh, you did? Why?’

  ‘He hit me.’

  ‘What? That bastard! How could he? What else did he do? Why didn’t you tell me earlier? Wait, I am coming over,’ Varun said and disconnected the call before Kajal could respond. He texted her to ask whether she was at her college hostel or home. A little voice inside her wanted to ask Varun to stay away, but it was silenced by the tears that trickled down her face. Kajal needed her best friend. She tied her hair back loosely and ran her fingers on her cheek where Dushyant’s hand had struck fair and square. Her pale-white skin still bore the marks of his rough hand. Dushyant was a strong guy, and he had not tried to restrain himself when he’d slapped her.

  She saw Varun park his car in the parking lot of the Defence Colony market. The car number ended with 0002, like every one of Varun’s family’s cars. Varun belonged to a family with means. His father owned one of the biggest printing presses in Delhi. Within the first year, Varun’s sharp business acumen landed them their first multinational clients and helped them grow at a faster rate than his father had imagined. Their 200-acre plant swelled to 600 acres, the number of workers tripled, and they had more clients flying in from Europe and North America than any other printing set-up in the country. Varun had transformed a lala-type family business into a seething, angry corporate giant.

  Contrary to what Kajal thought of him at first, he was not just another rich pretty boy in an Audi A4 labelled Dad’s Gift on the rear windshield. He was ambitious and cut-throat. He worked eighteen hours a day, travelled extensively for business and took his work very seriously. Kajal liked that in him, but it was also the root of discord between them. The meetings, the late-night flights, the investor presentations, the bank-loan agreements—between all this, he never had time for Kajal. For the major part of their relationship, Kajal was too awestruck to notice his absolute lack of commitment to the relationship. Kajal had always wondered what he saw in her. They broke up when he slept with someone on a business tour to Shillong. She didn’t think the break-up was because he slept with someone else. They had drifted apart long before that. What surprised her was her indifference to his betrayal.

  Without waking anyone, Kajal sneaked out of her place. ‘How are you doing?’ Varun asked. He looked as if he had aged ten years in one. Long hours in the office, she guessed. He had even lost some hair.

  ‘I am good. Much better now,’ she said. ‘How’s work?’

  ‘Let’s sit and talk?’ he said and led the way to the nearest Subway outlet.

  ‘Eating healthy these days?’ she mocked.

  ‘Doctor advised me to. He has asked me to start exercising too, but who has the time?’

  ‘You don’t, for sure,’ Kajal taunted. ‘You should take care of your health. You look like you have a couple of kids already.’

  Varun shrugged. ‘So, tell me, what happened?’ he asked.

  Kajal narrated her side of the story. She broke down a couple of times and realized that everyone had turned towards them. He listened patiently, ignoring all the uninvited looks from the nearby tables. Varun finished the salad and they walked towards his car. She didn’t want to cry in public. A girl like her, pretty and docile, why did she have to cry at all?

  ‘Will you be okay?’ Varun asked as they sat in the car.

  ‘I think so,’ she said and dug her face into her palms. And wept.

  ‘I still can’t believe he hit you.’

  ‘He was drunk,’ she murmured. She didn’t tell him the whole story.

  ‘Whatever the case may be, you’re in an abusive relationship, Kajal. Before this, he used to shout at you and threaten you. Now he has hit you. If you let him get away with this, he will keep doing it. First to you, then to the others he dates after you. You have to realize that he is mentally unfit to be in a relationship. He has no sense of boundaries. Hell! He doesn’t even respect your privacy. You’ve got to see that. The sooner you do, the better it will be for you. It’s a good thing you broke up. You just can’t be in such a restrictive relationship.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more,’ she said and tried to hold back the tears. Varun hugged her, and told her that everything would be all right. She wanted to believe him like she had believed him earlier, like she had believed Dushyant.

  For the next few days, Varun often dropped in after college timings to check in on Kajal. She was doing better, but she still missed Dushyant. She felt bad for herself that she did. Dushyant, on the other hand, tried his best to apologize and make things better. Kajal told him she didn’t want to hear a word from him. Dushyant stopped trying after he spotted Kajal get into Varun’s car one day. He called her that night, abused her and called her a slut. He told her that she must have cheated on him, that she was sleeping with Varun all this time.

  Kajal spent the next day crying. Varun was there to hold her hand. And to kiss her. She kissed Varun back. She was no longer in a restrictive, abusive relationship with a guy with an appalling lack of respect for her. She had broken free and walked right back into her past.

  5

  Zarah Mirza

  Zarah had fifteen cases to file that day, each of them more boring than the last. Broken arms, sprained ankles, torn ligaments, et cetera. Her boss, the enigmatic and brilliant Dr Arman Kashyap, was not fond of filing reports and that’s why he had the most number of interns working for him at one time. Usually interns worked in pairs, but Arman was never a big fan of rules. No one knew what he enjoyed more, flouting them or challenging the hospital authorities afterwards.

  ‘If you work in pairs, you get complacent about what you do. If you work alone, you become cautious from the word go,’ Arman had said on the first day. Zarah had not been able to forget those words. She used to check every medicine thrice, sometimes even more, before administering it to any patient. Even if it was just cough syrup.

  ‘You look busy?’ A fellow intern walked into the room the interns had been assigned. Though Zarah usually worked
in the opulent office of her boss, his overbearing presence used to made her jittery. The presence of any man made her feel jittery. She clearly remembered her first day in the hospital, with men crawling everywhere. Patients. Doctors. Ward boys. Their eyes like slithering snakes on her body—undressing her, violating her and rubbing their naked, sweaty, hairy bodies against her in their heads. In those moments, all her latent hatred for men bubbled over and she had a severe mental breakdown. Zarah had never been in a co-ed school or college and it was on her insistence. Staying away from men was the only way she could banish the horrors of her past.

  ‘I have a lot of filing to do,’ she said, trying to act busy. Ever since she had started her internship, an alarming number of interns, resident doctors and senior doctors had showered her with attention. It fuelled her need for sleeping pills and antidepressants.

  ‘Your boss is an asshole,’ the fellow intern said.

  ‘He’s not that bad. People are jealous because he is good … and young,’ she defended him. His searching eyes made her feel uncomfortable, like she had been doused with a bucket full of rotting maggots.

  ‘He is reckless and has no regard for rules. He doesn’t file reports or keep a history of the medicines he prescribes. The other doctors keep mum but I am sure many patients have died under his watch because of his crazy ideas,’ he argued. Zarah noticed the restlessness in the intern’s eyes and his body language. Or was it lust? Maybe he was trying the primal, old-fashioned way to get her into bed. Take out the threat, the opposition, and any other contender who’s trying to bed who you want to bed first. Zarah wanted to run away. No, I’ve got to fight this! Like every rape victim, Zarah, too, had read all the books, documents, reports and guides that helped victims move on with their lives. Funny, no book prescribed sleeping pills, Xanax or Valium, because that’s what worked for her.

  ‘He gets the job done. He wraps up the most number of cases. If other doctors are men, he is God. Plus, he now has me for filing his reports. He doesn’t need to do that any more,’ Zarah defended him further, trying not to look at the intern. She was agitated. She could sense him licking his lips greedily. The maggots had entered her clothes. They were everywhere. Small, slithering and slimy.