Nikhil and Riya Read online

  I was the last to leave the ground. I stood there for many hours, next to the burning wood and the dying embers.

  When B.P. asked me to come, ‘Later,’ I softly said.

  He understood because he left me alone, standing there, surrounded by her ashes like fairy dust. Then the vultures came, and then the sweepers, gathering away the rest of her remains and then it was nightfall and then the sky turned from blue to grey.

  88

  I REMAIN AS the rest of them flit away, the smoke twine in lazy languorous tendrils, the ashes like confetti in the wind. If she had been alive, what would have been?

  ‘Specs, the life you have is the life you are meant to live.’

  How many times have I repeated this line over and over to myself, especially in the years after she died?

  I wonder though, was I living my life? A good life? A happy life? I am successful, I have a son and I love him; I have a wife and I love her too – not in the way I loved Riya, but in another way. But was I living the best life that I possibly could? The life I would have lived if I had thirty days to live? The life that she had wanted me to live? I remember the book she had once given me, The Man Who Knew Infinity, and then she had whispered into my ear, ‘You’re a genius too.’

  I had once held infinity in my palm but I had to release it now as I had back then. She rescued me now as she had done back then and as I stand, the fire burning bright, I know that she would never have wanted me to be the way I have become. I decide in that moment that I have to change my life.

  After another hour, I walk away, the ground sodden and swampy, the sky unfurling its clouds. I have almost reached the road when I hear a shrill cry. I turn around and see a tiny, shrivelled figure approaching me. I squint my eyes, and wonder if it could really be him.

  ‘Bhaiyya!’ he yells in a raspy old voice.

  It is undoubtedly him, as crumpled as he had ever been, limping towards me with a toothless grin.

  ‘Jeevan,’ I whisper to the wind.

  How happy I am to see this ancient man alive.

  ‘Bhaiyya!’ he cries, folding his hands as I pull him up, bringing him to my chest.

  ‘Jeevan,’ I say as I hold the frail old man close. He smells of the mountains, of wood smoke. How old must he be? A hundred? A hundred and two?

  ‘For you,’ he rasps, shoving a small bag in my hands.

  Apparently, B.P. had found it just a few days before he had died. They had tried mailing it to me, but the courier had been returned. I realize that the school must have had my grandparents’ address but they passed away a long time ago, and I had sold their property for the down payment on my house.

  I stare hard at the bag and then I open it. My breath catches, my heart seems to flip. I am a grown man with a wife and a son, MD at India’s biggest bank. But here I am once again, feeling just like a crippled little boy.

  It is from Riya and inside is a letter and a small black box.

  89

  I HAD TWO options after she died. I could give up or I could live on.

  I chose to live on because that is what she would have wanted, that is what she had asked. I could not limp away from my life any more than Riya could run away from hers. People learned to live with things and this was my life. I had to learn how to live with it, even if it was now a miserable, messy affair. I knew with more surety than anything else that I was dying, as was everyone else on Earth, and so I had to learn how to live.

  Before I knew her, though I hadn’t quite understood it, I lived almost entirely inside my head. But she had taught me to live in the present – this was her greatest gift to me – and I knew that I had to go on, and to accept what was coming my way.

  I didn’t have much time left after she died, and suddenly I wanted to get away from the place that I had earlier never wanted to leave. It was Riya who had dreamt of leaving, never me. I had been happy to be here at Residency School, the only world I had known, puttering in my little room, creeping in the old halls and the hidden nooks. But without her, the world that I had known was shattered and nothing was the same any more. So I made a promise to myself and to her that I would leave, I would get out of here and go to a better place. Nowhere would be better without her, but I didn’t want to be that loser, that wimp, I wanted to be something better, someone of whom she would be proud.

  The days passed, the seasons turned, the twelfth-standard board exam chaos started again. I watched my classmates, my juniors, my teachers all around me stressing, studying, worrying. They were all kind to me, leaving me mostly alone. They didn’t even come ask me for my notebooks, because everyone knew that they were incomplete. Vikram too let me be, nodding his head at me as he passed me by. I looked at him blankly, gazed right through him, like I did with the rest.

  During the day I locked myself in my small room, thinking only of my books and of her. I had seen her body turn to ash, but I still couldn’t adjust to the fact that she had returned to nothingness. It was too strange to think that she was longer part of this world. So I didn’t. I studied and studied till nothing made sense any more, my grief and sadness melting into my books.

  But at night when I lay down dog-tired, my head spinning with numbers and formulae, I would close my eyes and walk into another life. We were back in the eleventh standard. I would wake up and daydream my way through class. The games bell would ring and I would make my way to the track, and there amongst the clouds and chalk, I would watch her run, as graceful as a bird in flight.

  I would bike my way to her house, the wind blowing in my hair, the trees dense and green, and I would end up with her on the doorsteps of her house in the light of the fading sun. In those days I often thought of what the master had said – celebrate death like you do life. But no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t get myself to celebrate her death.

  But I did do something.

  I went to the place that she loved most, the track, and next to the pavilion, in a small patch of mud, I sprinkled her ashes and planted a tree. Then I found some marigold seeds and I sprinkled those in the sodden earth too.

  Now when I return all those years later, there it is in the distance, close to the finish line – a tree, brown bark, green leaves and very much a tree. It is surrounded by a spark of overgrown orange marigolds that cover parts of the track, so bright that they hurt the eye. These flowers are different from anything else on campus where flowers were planted neatly in beds around the school, colour-coordinated to match houses and walls. These are wild, disorderly, growing haphazardly around a solitary, misplaced tree. It is all so enchanting that even the Residency School’s militaristic malis did not have the heart to tear them down. As I look, I see a pair of lovers go sit underneath that tree.

  I smile to myself, thinking that all is as it should be. They would carve their names on the walls of lovers and then go sit in a bed of marigolds, and kiss under the tree.

  As for B.P., we never spoke again. There was no specific reason for this. He was involved in his grief and I in mine. I often saw him in the distance, coaching in his cricket whites, blowing his whistle loudly, sometimes in the hallway in his suit. Once, I caught him staring blankly at the board of school captains and prefects where Riya’s name was carved in gold, and where mine had recently been replaced by Vikram’s upon his request.

  When I graduated, he patted me heartily on the back, congratulated me with a beam like he did with every single boy, nothing more and nothing less.

  I wanted to say goodbye to him before I left campus. So, after my last exam, I biked to the house, but without Riya on the steps, I cycled back as fast as I could to pack up the rest of my things, before I left, once and for all, the campus that had been my home for twelve years.

  Yet.

  Yet.

  Not a day, a minute, a moment passed by when I didn’t think of her, when she wasn’t with me by my side. I don’t care what people say, but I swear she was there every step of the way. The day I sat stuck on that exam, quietly encouraging me to answer t
he final question, the one which only eighteen students in the country got correct.

  ‘Come on, Specs, you know this! Don’t be so dumb.’

  I swear she was there with me, graduating, throwing her cape in the air.

  I swear she was there when I sat for the last time on the steps of Scindia Pavilion, quietly sobbing by myself.

  And then she was there when I finally left, just like she was when I first saw her, so glorious that she took my breath away, a miracle, an apparition, her short, white socks, her dusty black shoes, that ponytail that swirled in the wind.

  As I sat at the back of the taxi, I turned around, and there she was at the big metal gates of Residency School, waving to me as I left.

  She didn’t stop me when I was leaving, just like I didn’t stop her when she was. Instead, she stood there, a smile on her face, telling me, ‘Go, Specs, go. Go make a life that you’ll be proud of. Go have adventures where they are to be had, and never for a second, a minute, look back into the past and be sad.’

  And as the car took the bend, she whispered in my ear, ‘I am with you every step of the way.’

  I knew then that leaving was simply a journey back to her.

  90

  NOW, I HAVE time to write. I am working on a schoolbook of mathematics, something I have always wanted to do. My wife, she’s now in charge, I hear her gentle voice, giving stern orders as everyone follows her command. Believe it or not, but we left the city and became farmers, organic farmers. We are happy here, our kids are growing up well, and Meeta is unbelievably good at what she does. Back in the city, she couldn’t find her feet, but she loves it here – she is the one who runs the show.

  My son went to boarding school this year. We didn’t send him to Residency School. It’s still high on the rankings, and Meeta was keen, but I knew that I couldn’t go back – not three times a year, not where the past was so real. Instead, we sent him to one of those new-age boarding schools, which, believe it or not, doesn’t even have a school uniform.

  My daughter has woken up now.

  ‘Papa?’ she says in a sleepy voice.

  ‘Yes, jaan?’

  She rubs her twinkling eyes.

  ‘Is it time yet?’

  I look at my watch – 4.00 p.m.

  ‘You were supposed to wake me up.’

  ‘Sorry, my love. Your papa, he got lost.’

  But she isn’t listening, not right now. She hops up from the sofa, throws on her sneakers, and holding my fingers tight we walk to the track.

  Three minutes later, she’s flying down that track, her little arms and legs like a songbird in flight. State trials are next week, and my little Riya, she is determined to win, determined to break all records, though most are already hers.

  I stand there, stopwatch in my hand, watching her run, and all of a sudden, I see a flurry of dust rising on the tracks, and there she is calling out my name, her blue skirt flying behind her, her hair wild in the wind. She is so real that I reach out to touch her, and it’s really as if she is there, and I am there, and in that moment, I realize once again what it is like to be absolutely and wholly complete.

  91

  SPECS,

  By the time you get this letter I will not be alive. But I wanted you to know a couple of things so here it is – the first letter I have written in my life. I know you like it here, but if you stay here, you will end up just like Ansari Sir. I don’t think you want that and neither do I. I think you should end up more like Ramanoojem (however, you spell his name) than him.

  I want you to go out, to do wonderful things and to discover your infinity like I discovered my own. I want you to live as if you only had thirty days to live. Remember what the master said? I was, I am, we are all going to die. What I did at the end, I want you to do now. Begin the process of becoming the person that you want to be when you die.

  Life can be snatched away from us at any moment – you know that better than I – so all we can really do is to live each moment the best that we can. I want you to do that, Specs, I really do. I know that you will then find as much peace, grace, love and happiness as this world allows. You may be feeling lonely and sad. But I want to tell you that the entire universe is within you, and inside that universe there is also me.

  I love you, Specs. Remember that I am with you, always, by your side.

  Love,

  Riya

  P.S. Vikram gave me this. I never opened it. I wanted you to have it, whatever it is that is inside.

  I opened the creaky lid of the small black box and there it was glittering like fool’s gold, my prefect badge, which had seen numbered days pinned to my chest. Vikram had taken it away from me and now at the end it had finally come back.

  I recalled the oath that I had taken when they had pinned the badge to my heart.

  ‘Guard thy badge with your life and honour, for this badge is now part of you as much as the most vital parts of your being.’

  At Residency School, badges were the most precious treasures, a cumulative reward for years of hard work, sweat, tears, victories and defeats. Vikram, in a testament of his love, had given her the badge, and now she had passed it on to me. I held my badge, now dark with rust, and I couldn’t fathom why this badge, this bauble, could mean so much, then, now and forever more.

  In the end, when I left school, I had made a vow never to cry again. Nobody else but Riya would ever deserve my tears. I had stuck to my vow, and I had not let myself cry, not when my grandparents died, not when I didn’t get the job I wanted, not when I had failed time and time again. But I am crying now, laughing and crying, fingering the badge, feeling joy, gratitude, happiness, release. These were the tears I had almost cried when I got married, the tears I had almost cried when my son was born, the tears I almost cried when I made my first million. I had never let myself cry, but now I cried because confronting death made me now want to live.

  If Riya had never died, my life would have been a simple mountain stream, coursing a simple path, but she had pushed that stream to merge into a vast ocean, and I knew that my life was about something bigger than what I had once thought it would be.

  I realize there is a greater force than us, something that shapes our lives, guiding us, helping us. I realize that life wasn’t meant to be fought, but cherished, for who knew when the last moment would arrive. As Riya had once told me, life was for living, and death, that was for dying, and even that was beautiful in its own way. I didn’t have to be afraid of death, but I had to be prepared to face it, and I could only do that by living the best life that I could.

  Riya had thirty days to live and when she went, she went with acceptance, knowing that her short life had been lived fully and well. That was the thing with her – she taught you things when you didn’t even want to learn, she made you laugh when you really wanted to cry, she made you live when all you wanted to do was to die.

  Acknowledgements

  There are many whom I have to thank for making this book what it has become. My gurus, my yoga practice, my family. But most of all I want to thank Nicholas Henderson for being there for me from start to end. This book wouldn’t have been half of what it is without you. Thank you for being there at conception, encouraging me to write it, hearing me out when the going was hard, for stepping in as the editor and, most of all, for always being there at the end of the line.

  About the Book

  How would I describe her? That she was tall and had long legs and wild hair? That she walked with her chin up in the air and found it hard to smile but was easy to love? That she ran so fast that she sometimes beat the wind? That she was the girl who was the keeper of not just my heart but also my soul?

  Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if I had never met Riya, and sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if Riya had lived. Sometimes I wish I did not live every single moment of every single day knowing that there was once someone like her out there – someone who made me complete.

  That was us – Nikhil a
nd Riya – a love story that had a start but no end. A love story that transformed me not once but twice, a love story that taught me not just to live but also to die.

  For anyone who has ever loved The Fault in Our Stars by John Green or Love Story by Erich Segal, here is a timeless love story that explores the journey of healing, moving on, learning to live and coming to terms with death.

  About the Author

  Ira Trivedi is the author of six books, including India in Love. When she is not writing, she is doing yoga. She lives in New Delhi. For more information visit her website www.iratrivedi.in

  TALK TO US

  Join the conversation on Twitter

  http://twitter.com/HarperCollinsIN

  Like us on Facebook to find and share posts about our books with your friends

  http://www.facebook.com/HarperCollinsIndia

  Follow our photo stories on Instagram

  http://instagram.com/harpercollinsindia/

  Get fun pictures, quotes and more about our books on Tumblr

  http://www.tumblr.com/blog/harpercollinsindia

  First published in India in 2016 by Harlequin

  An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

  Copyright © Ira Trivedi 2016

  P-ISBN: 978-93-5264-130-7

  Epub Edition © December 2016 ISBN: 978-93-5264-131-4

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Ira Trivedi asserts the moral right

  to be identified as the author of this work.

  This is a work of fiction and all characters and incidents described in this book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.