14th June, 2015.
Ambulance.
I never had been inside an ambulance before! Though the age
old bollywood movies and stupid t.v serials that my sister and mother watch
with the ineffable devotion did some justice to the imagery that I had formed
inside my head, it is never the same. I remember, in fragments, about what was
it like and when later I tried to match it with those in movies, they weren’t
the same. Or maybe I wasn’t paying much attention; I wasn’t in a position to do
so that night.
I remember Arjun sitting by my side, speechless and mentally
traumatized. Like someone had pulled all of his joke, witticism, all his clever
sarcasms out of him, just a shell of him remained motionless. I, on the other
hand, wasn’t any different from him, maybe even worse. In front of us, there
was the body, laid like a broken rag doll whose left arm was at an impossible
angle. The crisp white bed-sheet wasn’t white anymore; rather, anyone would
have mistaken it for a red sheet with white spots. The whole room (I still
don’t know what they call it, maybe it doesn’t have a name or term for the back
of an ambulance) was filled with a bad stench. It happens when the brain stops
functioning, the bowel movements becomes involuntary. Combine that with the
rustic smell of blood, sealed medicines and some iodine solutions maybe (I
don’t remember), and you’ll get a formidable, putrid smell.
Shalini lay in front of us both. Motionless, but not dead,
somewhere in between. Her beautiful face was not beautiful anymore, I don’t
know what it was but not beautiful. Dislocated jaw, missing teeth, misplaced
nose, broken arm, internal injuries, bathed in her own blood, it can be a
morbid fascination for a psychopath, but for me it was painful. My shirt was
crispy with the drying blood, and so was Arjun’s, his Jim Morrison tee shirt
was like some bad canvas of a 5 year old. I made a joke later after, but none
laughed, neither Arjun nor Shalini. Well, jokes aren’t my forte really.
We were at Malviya nagar, me and Arjun, having momos and
beers when Sharma aunty called on my phone. I had heard before that when a
woman is crying her language changes into a cryptic cipher. But the firsthand
experience was that evening only. It took the both of us some seconds to a
minute to realize her words. “…beta…Shalini…blood…jumped…” which was followed
by her wails that might have come out of the phone for there were people
looking at us questioningly.
We must have broken almost 50 traffic rules that evening,
Arjun was driving like hell, like some car chase scene from a movie. We almost
collided with a truck, were inches from running over a guy and some other
things, luckily there wasn’t anything and we weren’t apprehended by the
judiciary. Well, I still consider myself lucky.
I was feeling helpless, for the first time in my life I was
out of my wits and thinking of it now, there could have been worse situations.
The constant oscillation between consoling Sharma aunty and calling the
ambulance wasn’t an easy task, it is never easy. Arjun although called our
friends, all of them and almost everyone came from the group, but after that he
too became frigid, trauma is inevitable. The decision was easy. Aunty would be
following us in one of our friend’s car while both of will be in the ambulance.
I was angry. Really angry. There was a point when I really
wanted to slap Shalini, regardless of her then condition. Slap her so hard that
she’ll wake up of her pain. I remember telling her once that our lives aren’t
really our own, it belongs to people who love us, cares about us. Every
decision we make, every choice, even if we like it or not, the people around us
get affected inevitably. If not right then, they will in the long term. Yet,
forgetting all that I said, she took the decision to end it. And the mode she
chose was more stupid. Take a poison pill, there is cyanide available! Or slit
your wrist! But no, you had to jump? Suppose you don’t die, the embarrassment
will be scarring enough; the cost of mending the broken bones will be emptying
your pockets. Shalini later told us (after 3 and half months) that she wasn’t
thinking anything. Her decision, albeit being stupid and dumb, was a
spontaneous one. That made me angrier and I almost exploded on her in the
hospital, in front of the doctor and the nurses. She had no idea what we all
had been through for the last 3 months. Yet I really cannot blame her. The
invitation cards had already been sent to get printed, all the relatives knew,
the marriage was just round the corner when Abhish called her to break it off
for no reason, or maybe an ulterior reason, we never asked. We didn’t want to.
Although to be frank, Abhish too wasn’t in a condition to answer after what I
and Arjun did. We knew he was a bastard, but this went too far, and so did we.
Suffice to say, he ended up with broken ribs, traumatized diaphragm, and other “minor”
injuries. Shalini wasn’t just a friend to us, and Abhish wasn’t a friend to us,
so nothing to regret, and we don’t. None of us regret. That’s what friends do,
right? Although it did upset Shalini, but she was able to forgive. It was that
phone call that led her to consider suicide, and her jump led us to beat the
shit out of him, balance of world!
It has been over three years now, since that night. That
ambulance is still vivid in my dreams, the blood, Shalini’s cold hands in mine,
her blood on me and Arjun, us being completely dumbfounded by the situations
that night, and the consecutive three and half months. There wasn’t one night
when we weren’t at the hospital, turn by turn. All of us!
It is also three years since Shalini is her again. Not that
ugly disjointed, cracked body, but beautiful again. Well, she complains at
times, especially during winters when the pain in her arm becomes unbearable,
but it is okay. At least, she’s not dead. After being discharged from the
hospital, she asked me if I will ever write about this. “Will you write as it
is, vikram?” she asked. Well, it took me three years to write, but I don’t think
it is a good story to publish in the books, or maybe, if she reads it first and
likes it, I might will print it. Well, if anything, the ambulance had changed
things for good. She’s not dead and I am more than alive.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX End XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
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