Inseparable souls

She knew her husband wouldn’t come out alive. She knew he was gone forever. Still, when the doctors came and told her that they weren’t successful at saving him, she felt her stomach sinking, her head dizzying, her body sweating profusely, the pupils of her eyes dilating , her heart palpitating as if it shall break open and come out of her chest cavity.

She sat down on the hospital chair with a thud and demanded for a cold glass of water. Her brain, for a moment, was dead. She couldn’t collect herself and closed her eyes. She drank the water like an animal quenching its long disturbing thirst. After a while, she asked herself “Didn’t I know that this was destined to happen? Didn’t I see the same scene repeated so many times in my nightmares? Didn’t I train my heart and mind for the worst? Then why is my body revolting? Why is my body behaving untrained?” She collected herself, regained her composure and with a weary face and a haggard soul less body, she went into the operation theatre.
The theatre was dimly lit and smelled sharply of something acidic. She approached his bed slowly with diffident steps. His body was covered with a white shroud and with trembling hands she uncovered his face. A shudder ran down her spine and she wondered that this body belongs to the same person, she was madly in love with and now she dreads to see him lying under that shroud! She saw his face, a smooth wrinkleless face that wore a sense of comfort, a sense of painless beatific pleasure. After so many months, she saw that expression in his face that she had longed to see while he was alive and struggling with Liver Cirrhosis. She thought how much he might have struggled in his last few hours, how much pain he might have been through.

She kept staring at him and said to herself “How comfortably he sleeps! Death has done him a favor. ” She smiled looking at that face and tears kept rolling down her eyes incessantly. She sat down on the chair by the bed and closed her eyes.

A train of his memories passed by her eyes. Their 5 years of marriage. Although it was an arranged marriage and they had no clue that they shall grow so very fond of each other. She recollected those moments when they fought, when they argued over things and reconciled within no time, when they discussed Philosophy together, shared common interests in music, literature and cinema. Moments when he read her his favorite excerpts from Thoreau’s Walden, from Sartre’s Age of Reason, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Times when they watched Casablanca for the nth time and watched it with rapt attention …dumbstruck…

Times when she would read Pablo Neruda to him with so much passion and amore, times when they would make love to each other through their eyes, times when he would worry about her and take care of her when she would be ill, times when he made failed attempts at kitchen just to please her, times when they planned to have children but dropped the idea very soon.
And then, her thoughts strayed to the bitter times…when he discovered that he has contracted a severe jaundice, times when she looked after him like a devoted wife, times when he would show slight improvement and raise her hopes but in the very next day, his condition would deteriorate further, the time, when he came to know that his liver had contracted cirrhosis and not jaundice. Times, when he would strengthen her hopes and still read his favorite excerpts, his favorite poems on life and death. He would often say “Death is but a long eternal holiday. Life on the other side of death is painless, is eternal. I shall never let these mortal pains, this goddamned Cirrhosis or whatever, to dampen my spirit. My spirit shall bask in its eternal sheen.”

Such words of his would make her cry and he would console her, strengthen her and infuse in her a reinvigorated spirit. He would often cough blood and the doctors would scribble prescriptions anew and every time when he saw his changed medication plan, he would laugh at the absurdity of life.
He asked her to continue reading Neruda to him and she read her favorite “Carnal apple, woman filled, burning moon” . For sometime, when he would see her love for him in her eyes, he would feel painless , he would feel a renewed vigor to live and again his strife against death would start anew.

He was soon admitted in the hospital and his condition worsened further. He could barely speak. Once he wrote on a paper to her, “Its you who is making me suffer.. I can’t die because you’ve so firmly held the cords of my life. Release them, my dear. For once! I promise, I won’t go anywhere but shall stay with you forever. Believe me, can you? Let not this fucking ailment bother me anymore. Release me to let me come afresh and rejuvenated.”

The next day, the doctors declared that surgery was the only option left and she quietly signed the documents and completed all the formalities. She sat by him and she kept staring at him for a long time as if she bade him an adieu. He smiled and wiped away her tears. He looked at her with an uninterrupted sight for a long time as if he accepted her farewell graciously. While he was being shifted to the surgery ward, he handed over a book of poems of R.W Emerson to her. She saw a bookmark inside and opened that page. It was his favorite poem “Goodbye World!” She knew she was not going to see him anymore. Seeing her for one last time, he heaved a long penetrating sigh.

She opened her eyes soon and found her encircled by her relatives. Everyone was crying and she quietly left the room. His body was taken to the cremation ground, in one of the burning ghats. Her vision stayed affixed to his face. He was soon, laid on the funeral pyre and the pyre was set ablaze. She saw large clouds of smoke forming. She saw the fire consuming his body with an infernal joy. She saw him getting reduced to ashes and within no time, he was but a handful of ashes. She stood frozen and her relatives took her home.

That night she had slept as if she had been unloaded from a heavy burden on her shoulders. She had slept after months. She saw him in her dreams. He had come to her in white immaculate clothes, smiling. He looked upbeat, in the pink of his health. He walked towards her with his same old dignity, with his elegant panache and his handsome face dazzling .He was radiating bliss, self belief and victory.

She heard him say, “I told you, I shall come to you. See , I have come… Afresh! I am sorry , I left you alone for sometime but it was necessary. I couldn’t do with that stale , diseased body anymore. I had to go.”
She saw herself having joyous tears in her eyes, nodding vehemently and saying “Yes, I know. You had to go and don’t be sorry.”
She saw herself embracing him.

“I shall come with you. My life is nothing without you” she said.

“Who said you’re without me? I am always with you, though formless but still there and dear, I was not tired of living. I still want to live through you. I want to see the world through your eyes, I want to feel everything through your senses. I want to stay alive in your spirit. The books I haven’t read, I shall read through you. The music, that still remains untouched to my ears, I’ll hear through you. How can you come with me? You have to live for me and I shall live in you.”
With these words, she saw him being consumed by a milky white light. Her eyes were blinded by that dazzle and she saw that blinding light illuminating her. She felt a transcendental bliss, an arrant pleasure, a divine intervention.

She opened her eyes and smiled. She knew, this world still awaits her. She knew she had left her work half done, she had goals to accomplish, successes to be glorified in and a life irrigated by his memories and his unconditional love to enjoy.

She knew she had to live for both…for her and for him!