Nikhil and Riya Read online

  Seeing that I am still tense, he laughs and places a hand on my shoulders. ‘Your friend, she is travelling in infinity, as free as a speck of light.’

  I have heard what I need to hear, and so I thank him and leave. I find my car and begin driving in the darkness, making my way up the mountain, now for the final stretch.

  63

  WE LEFT ON our journey at the crack of dawn. I hadn’t slept much, nervous and excited about the journey ahead. I was also somewhat anxious. I had avoided B.P. since my badge had been taken away, and now I would have to spend hours with him enclosed in a small car. B.P. had rooted for me to become prefect and the thought that I had embarrassed him made me want to sneak into a dark hole and never come out.

  At first the silence in the car was discomfiting for me. It was clear right away that B.P. didn’t want to talk – the only way he had acknowledged me was by giving a stiff polite smile and signing my exit pass. A driver was driving, B.P. was in the front seat and Riya and I were at the back. I was wearing my only set of civilian clothes – a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and a coarse maroon sweater my grandmother had once sent. Riya wore her usual navy tracksuit with a light grey woollen hat that made her look like a little girl.

  The mood eased as B.P. nodded off to sleep and gently snored in the front seat. Riya and I whispered to each other and passed each other notes.

  Soon Riya too fell asleep, her cap covering her eyes, headphones wrapped around her head. I had given her the Walkman to use for her running but she never used it for that. I stayed awake for some time, thoughts racing through my mind. I wondered where we were going. What were we doing? Riya had been very vague about everything, more so than usual, not saying much about the trip.

  Eventually, lulled by B.P.’s snores, I too closed my eyes. I didn’t even notice falling asleep – that’s how tired I was – exhausted from school politics, drained by my many losses, I do not even remember if I had dreamed.

  We arrived three hours later just as I awoke. We were in a valley, surrounded by steel-coloured mountains poised against a lavender sky. The peaks here seemed to be closer and more majestic, with a gleam different from the mountains that surrounded Residency School. The sun here was brighter too, and I shielded my eyes as I got out of the car.

  We were outside a small, indistinct guesthouse two storeys high made of grey cement. Someone came out to get our bags. Riya and I stretched our legs and hung out by the car while B.P. checked us in. B.P., who hadn’t said more than two words to me, handed me a set of keys. Riya and he were sharing a room while I was to have my own. I could tell that despite the fatigue in her eyes, Riya was excited. B.P., I could see by the constant frown on his face, was worried. As for me, as usual I wasn’t sure how to feel.

  As I waited in my room, wondering what to do with myself, Riya knocked on my door. She had changed into a pair of jeans and a fitted cream sweater that I had never seen her wear before. Her hair – usually tied up in a ponytail – was now loose, and it lay in messy curls covering her shoulders, neck and back. Her face was pale and her cheeks were flushed, matching the colour of her lips.

  ‘That’s a nice sweater,’ I blurted out, reeling under her extraordinary effect. She looked so beautiful sometimes that it physically hurt.

  ‘It was Ma’s,’ she said simply, pinching her sweater with her fingers, and then looking out of the window to the mountains hidden by the clouds.

  I knew that there was something on her mind. She paced and fidgeted and twitched the curtains back and forth. ‘Do you think all this is really strange?’

  I was confused. ‘What’s strange?’

  She studied the floor before she looked up at me. ‘All this, us being here.’

  ‘No, not really,’ I lied.

  Truth be told, all I could think was what in the world was I doing here. All Riya had told me was that we were going to see someone important, but she had not divulged any further details. And I had not asked.

  ‘My mother came here, you know,’ she said, looking up at me now.

  ‘She did?’

  ‘Right before she died.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To visit the master we’re going to see.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, confused.

  ‘Papa says that he helped her out.’

  ‘The master?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that why we are here?’ I asked, still quite confused.

  She shrugged and puckered her lips. ‘I guess so. I came here too, you know, with her before she died. I don’t remember much, I just have vague memories of this nice time. Thank you,’ she said, embarrassed and now looking at her feet.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For coming with me.’

  Her face was thoughtful, she looked at me intently, as if she was going to say something else, but then we heard B.P. calling for her in the hallway.

  ‘I better go,’ she said, leaving me, as always, a little dazed as she walked swiftly out of my room.

  64

  WE SAT IN front of a wizened man with a wrinkled face, broad smile and only a few teeth. The room was warm and bright with sunlight streaming in from the large windows, creating sharp patterns on the floor. B.P. sat with us for a little while, but soon quietly slipped out of the room.

  The master looked at Riya, nodding happily. He was totally bald, with long feathery, snow-white eyebrows that looked like doves ready to take flight. He took her hands into his and held them tight. Riya looked up at him. I wonder what was going on in her head, but I didn’t have to wait long for an answer.

  With hesitation in her voice, she finally blurted out, ‘They say I’m dying. That I have thirty days to live.’

  He looked at her, blinking his old eyes, and then much to my surprise he laughed out loud.

  ‘I am dying too,’ he said in a calm and matter-of-fact way. ‘Your father and your friends too. We all die, little by little. Just a matter of time, isn’t it? Your time is just a little sooner than mine.’

  The way he said it, death didn’t sound very sad at all. He bobbed his head and continued with laughter in his voice. ‘Death is not as scary as it sounds. Death is just a stage of life. Being a baby, that’s one stage, a teenager another; being an old man like me, that is a stage too. Death is like that, a stage of life we have to pass through. The only reason we get scared is because we don’t know what it is like and we don’t know where we will go.’

  He chuckled again and tugged at the maroon robe draped around his neck.

  ‘Don’t be scared. You are a brave girl, and death, like life, is better if we just accept what is coming our way. Why not accept and celebrate death just like we accept and celebrate life? Death is a wonderful way to find life. Why be scared? It’s the one thing that will happen to all of us without fail. It’s the only thing we can predict. About anything at all.’

  ‘But I want to run more races – what about that?’ she asked him softly, studying the sunlight on the floor for a moment and then looking up at him with a sort of longing in her eyes.

  He paused and then with a wise, quiet look, said, ‘You will, you will. All of your wishes will come true, that is the nature of this soul. God is a very good timekeeper, and for every one of us the clock works differently. For each one of us, there is a time to love and a time to die. But, at this moment, you have to accept what is coming your way. And acceptance means letting go of the things you are attached to. You don’t have to do it all at once. Do it slowly. One by one, like the petals leave the rose.’

  The master seemed very satisfied. He sat back and almost seemed to be laughing except that he was silent. He was a strange, silly, happy man, but in some way he also seemed to be the most powerful person I had ever met.

  Then he said, shaking his bald head from side to side, ‘Don’t fear death. Trust that only wonderful things are ahead. These days, they put people on painful medicines, hoping and hoping, wanting more days, but that makes things worse. We all have our time, every one of us, and there will
be more time for many more souls.’

  He crinkled his nose and peered into her eyes.

  ‘Here, we celebrate the day the person dies like the day a person is born. If people didn’t cry at funerals, they may be a lot of fun.’

  The master now burst into laughter, very pleased at his own joke. At this, Riya smiled and so did I.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ she said in a lighter voice.

  ‘You can surely ask.’

  ‘Is there such a thing as God?’

  This time, he smiled so deeply his eyes disappeared into his leathery face. ‘That you exist is proof that there is God, because if God didn’t exist, how could we? All these scientists, they try to explain the origin of life, but after all these years and centuries of research they have only come so far,’ he said, holding his fingers an inch apart.

  She thought about this for a moment, chewing on her lip.

  ‘That something that you feel, that little spark inside? That something is the only thing that lasts through this life, through this death, through the next life, the next death and all other lives and deaths that will come your way. That something is the God within you, that God which you are questioning right now.’

  His eyes were very bright now and Riya looked up at him with so many questions in her eyes.

  ‘You ask a lot of questions, young lady, but remember this for the rest of your days because it will give you peace. Nothing is permanent and nothing will last. Everything, everyone will die, just at different times. Life is a sequence of births and deaths and for new experiences to happen, old ones need to die.’

  The master now suddenly exclaimed, ‘I remember your mother now! She, like you, asked many questions.’

  ‘She did?’

  ‘She did. I told her that that all the answers already lay within her, she just had to look inside. You, my young friend, can do the same.’

  A wistful look came over him. It seemed strange to have such a happy man look even remotely sad. ‘She came here with a small baby.’

  ‘That was me,’ Riya said.

  The master was so delighted by this that he laughed and clapped his hands.

  ‘Oh yes! Your mother, she was very strong. She was not scared of death, not like most people. She was prepared for death, you know.’

  ‘She was?’

  ‘Yes, yes she was.’

  And then he looked at me, sitting in a corner.

  ‘And who is this, this young man?’

  ‘He’s my best friend,’ Riya said simply.

  He beckoned me. My leg had fallen asleep and I dragged myself to the cushion, closer to them both.

  ‘What’s your name, young friend?’ he asked.

  ‘Nikhil.’

  ‘Nikhil. A good name for a good boy. A fine boy. You, my young friend, you have a role to play too. You are an important part of Riya’s life and you will be an important part of her death.’

  I looked wide-eyed at him. I had no desire to be part of anyone’s death, let alone Riya’s.

  ‘Don’t worry, friend!’ he said, looking at Riya, and then back at me.

  He took my hand in his and I am amazed by how warm and welcomed I now felt. He came closer to me and whispered in my ear.

  ‘I will tell you only good things. Now let me share a little secret with you…’

  65

  UNTIL NOW, I knew that she was dying, but I had not thought about death. I had understood death as something entirely separate from life. Now, however, it was dawning upon me that death exists not as the opposite of but very much a part of life. I knew that death could take you in an instant, squeezed out of a body during a car crash, but what I had never thought about was how death itself lived in life, embedded in each shiny cell. I had studied that amino acids changed into cells that gave us life but now I knew that the cells which kept you alive could kill you as easily too.

  This visit to the master had given me a chance to see things in a way that I had not before. I had been in denial and now slowly that was starting to fade.

  Right from the start, right from the time she had given me the news, Riya had seemed to know with chilling calm that she was going to die. I remember what the master had said to her right before we had left the room: ‘You have thirty days left. Many people, most people, don’t even have that. Live each day to the fullest and in the best possible way.’

  Riya was resilient, the kind of fighter that I could never be. She was not giving up on life, she was in fact doing something much more difficult. She was accepting this without a fight, and this wasn’t easy for her, who had been born to fight and to win. I realized then something that she had already discovered – life wasn’t a race. These are the words I had myself said to her. Life wasn’t meant to be fought or won, life was meant to be lived, and Riya, by not fighting with death, was living every day of her life.

  66

  AFTER WE LEFT the master’s house, I felt as light as a dream. We wandered around the market, past the crowded noodle stands, red-cheeked women hawking us their wares, their pink-faced babies strapped to their back, the chiming sounds of the prayer wheels in the distance, the mountain sun on our back. I spent all my pocket money buying her a new tape for the Walkman that she now carried everywhere. We ate Maggi, gulping it down with soft drinks, and looked shyly into each other’s eyes. I stole a few moments to hold her hand, until someone who looked vaguely like B.P. approached us from a distance. We quickly broke away, and then laughed when we realized that it was not him.

  Here, in this magical town ringed with endless mountains, the sky was crystal clear. In the fading light of the afternoon, my worries also seemed to fade away and I felt that I was floating, a stray mountain cloud in the sky.

  For a second I stopped as she walked ahead of me. She ran her hands through her messy hair and bent down to look at a book as the sun lit her face. She swivelled her head and caught me staring. This time, I did not look away. For that moment, everything felt exactly as it must, and if I could pause life for a moment and then return to it before the end, this was the moment that I would choose. There was no real profundity, no complexity, but in its simplicity it was bliss and it stands apart as the time that I was most happy and content.

  We walked back to the guesthouse at the speed of snails, biding time before inevitably seeing B.P., but he was nowhere to be seen. I have worried throughout this trip about whether B.P. was watching me, watching us – but now I didn’t care any more.

  We went back to my small room. She switched on the TV, lying down on the bed. She was tired, and as she watched a silly show on TV, I watched her from the corner of my eye. I took in the upward slant of her mouth when she smiled, the downward when she sighed, her eyebrows arching above her eyes, the eyelashes fluttering up and down. I watched her as she fell asleep, and I moved closer to her, stroking her hair, touching her cool face with my fingers as she moved a little in her sleep. She was so close to me that her breath mingled with my own and then I closed my eyes and went off into her dream with her.

  67

  AS WE DROVE back the next day, B.P. looked tired, and he talked even less than usual, merely staring out of the window, a frown furrowing his face. Despite his dark mood, I was more relaxed. Riya seemed relaxed as well as she listened to her new tape while I read Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

  After the first hour and a tea stop, B.P. seemed better and I noticed that he had a book of poems in his hand. He chatted with the driver about the latest cricket scores, and I felt a small pang, wishing that I too knew about cricket and could maybe play too. Perhaps then I would have something to talk about with B.P.

  Another hour or two passed and I dozed off at the back of the car, waking suddenly to the wail of a passing truck. I rubbed my eyes and put my glasses back in place. B.P. was snoring softly now and Riya too was asleep. I scribbled a note for her and nudged her shoulder gently, trying to wake her up, but she didn’t budge. I squeezed her hand but she didn’t respond; her he
ad just bobbed to and fro.

  ‘Hey,’ I whispered.

  I said it loudly now, shaking her shoulder hard, touching her face. ‘Riya? Riya? Are you sleeping?’

  B.P., in the front seat, was slowly rousing.

  ‘Riya’ I said, loud and clear.

  B.P. looked back with sleepy eyes; then he saw the fear in my eyes. He immediately took Riya by the shoulders and shook her hard.

  ‘Riya,’ he called.

  But she just lay there.

  He told the driver to stop the car and rushed to the back, immediately checking her pulse and splashing water in her face.

  ‘Nikhil.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said, worried out of my wits and also afraid that I would cry.

  ‘Please go sit in the front.’ And to the driver, B.P. said in an urgent hiss, ‘Drive to the nearest hospital – very, very fast.’

  68

  THINGS WERE HAPPENING quickly, too quickly for me to understand – nurses, doctors, blue uniforms, white coats. The neon lights of the hospital buzzed and spat, the doors opened and closed with a pneumatic hiss. I stood by her side the whole time, in the centre of the emergency room, feeling a loud, horrible erratic thumping in my chest as if a dying animal was trapped inside.

  ‘Wake up, Riya, wake up,’ I whispered over and over again like a parrot gone cuckoo. She was mumbling now, her eyes opening, not looking at anything in particular and then closing again. B.P. was white with anxiety, his eyes aghast, but he was very calm. He spoke very slowly to me, to her, to the doctors, to everyone. He was an athlete, after all. If anyone was used to pressure, it was him.