Life always brings opportunities, but saddest are those who can's make to the end. Such an amorous tale it is that met an unhappy ending.
Sudha, in her early sixties, was lying shrivelled and still like a withered leaf; her breast heaving up and down with the rhythm of weakened breathing. She was aided with mask, pipe and oxygen cylinder.
Javed wiped his crinkled and tearful eyes with a handkerchief as he gently pushed the door that yielded with the sound of creaking hinges. Her hospital room, charged with a strong medicinal smell, was wrapped in dusky light sieving through the white curtain draping the overhead window.
It was the only window in the hospital room.
Gathering cheerfulness, which was then alien to his disposition, Javed tiptoed into the room to surprise her. Sudha was counting her last breaths, and every single moment, hour, and passing day, the inevitable truth was that this was hauling her to her cold and dark grave.
Reaching her bed, Javed felt a pain welling up in him. As he put his warm fingers on her forehead, fondling her salt-and-pepper hair, she became conscious of his pleasant presence. She stressed to open her feeble eyes that were sunk deeply under dark brows. As she managed a nebulous view of his stooping figure, a conquering smile crept over her lips that gradually spread over her eyes and face.
“Don’t get excited, Sudha, I am here”, Javed assured her, patting her head mildly.
She removed the mask from her face to give ease to their conversation.
“When did you come?” Sudha whispered as if she extracted the words from some fathomless abyss.
“Just now. How are you feeling?”
“So peaceful. Look they have taken out the cardiac monitor to relieve me from that continuous beeping sound, which always reminded me that my heart is going to stop.” She tried to smile to lighten the gravity of her words.
She was exhausted from having such an exciting conversation, and so took a deep breath to abate her pounding heart.
Javed smiled and kept looking at her pale face.
“My dear, what do you see when you stare so intently?”
Javed softly said, “You have grown more beautiful in these years, Sudha.”
Unwittingly, her cracked cheeks blushed, and eyes fluttered like wings of a butterfly.
“I am not of the age to be flattered, Mr. Javed. You are still like the fighter that you used to be in our college days, only now the enemy is more potent than those handsome boys who would propose to me with red roses. How jealous you were!” She tried to laugh, it sounded like a gurgle. under the replaced oxygen mask.
Javed gave a coy and gummy smile. Grimness dawned on his voice as he kept his wobbling hand on hers and said, “Why is God so cruel to impose such a fatal disease like cancer on you?”
“So that you can be here with me after so many, many years apart”, she said, replacing her oxygen mask.
“I hadn't dreamed I’d find you in such condition.” Javed's eyes yielded to tears that sourced from his agonised heart.
Suddenly a squeaking sound of shoes intruded on the sobered atmosphere inside the room. The doctor attired in white coat entered to do a routine check up, his stethoscope wriggling down his neck like a snake.
“Oh, Mr. Javed, it’s great to find you here. I need to have a talk with you.” Then turning to the prostrate figure of Sudha, said, “You look bright today. You will have your chemotherapy, tomorrow, alright?”
Sudha nodded but remained silent, only the corner of her eyes were glistening with teardrops.
“Mr. Javed, please stop to see me in my office”, the doctor said, exiting on busy steps.
Before leaving, Javed moved his lips close to Sudha's ears and whispered, “Do, you remember our first kiss?”
Sudha rolled her eyes as if he had touched a forbidden cord of her dormant memory—and now it had uncoiled. She bit her lower lip; a sensational feeling waved past her physic.
A moment of pleasing silence intervened before Javed said, “I should go. The doctor's waiting.”
“When will you come back?” she whispered.
Javed’s face was stamped with the pang of separation—and he dreaded answering. Coming back was what Javed had been anticipating for all those years, and now it felt as if he was returning to an intangible mirage.
When Javed entered the doctor's office, he was busy with patients' reports. “May I come in?”
The doctor nodded, and Javed sat on a chair facing the doctor.
After a minute or so, the doctor asked Javed, “How’s your health?”
It wasn't a question Javed had expected, but for courtesy's sake he said, “I am still alive.”
“I know it's not easy to maintain the cost of treatment for a cancer patient. And...”
“And, what?” Javed grew excited.
“I don’t know how this will sound, but I am most intrigued thinking about why you are stressing both your nerves and your pocket to fight for her?”
“She is my lifeline”, Javed said in such a compelling tone that the doctor became more expectant and waited for further clarification.
“We were in the same collage. I was her senior. She used to be very shy, but I knew she was willing.”
The doctor was very interested in such an old yarn, and asked, “You proposed to her?”
“Quite a few time before she responded.
“Positively?”
Javed nodded. “She was afraid that her community wouldn’t approve a Muslim boy, and I was afraid of our future”, he added in shaky voice.
“And then?”
“She got married.”
“And you?”
“Only she had to marry. I had promised to wait for her till my last breath—and I'm still breathing.”
“And your wait has come to an end?”
“Yes. Last year her husband died, and now she is alone and has no more responsibilities.”
“Her children?”
“She has none, and that's the cause of worry too.”
The doctor sighed as if he was disappointed.
“You know, she loved chocolate and...” Javed said, but sensing how childish he sounded, his words crumpled and died down.
“And?”
Javed wetted his lower lip with his tongue and said with a smile, “My violin. She was so demanding to listen to me play, especially her favourite song that I would often play for her. She loves Rabindrasangeet. I learned to play the tunes only for her.”
For some time the doctor allowed him to drink from the chalice of old memories, and then as if to haul him to a harsh reality asked, “Mr. Javed, have you thought anything about how you will pay the cost of the chemotherapy? She needs it immediately or...”
Javed shuddered with the inkling of an ominous prospect.
“No, I will pay the money. I...I”, Javed faltered.
“You are undaunted. But be practical. I am hopeless how to help with this case as she is standing on the verge of her last days.”
“You know, doctor, I have been living only for her. There was hardly a day when I didn't think about her for this long fifty-six years of my adult life. I could have died, but I didn't—so that I could fight for her now. If we can't be together on earth, we must be in heaven, I have no ravings against it.”
The doctor fell short of words as he could sense the old man’s determination and unyielding will.
“Okay, as you wish. Get the money as soon as possible, Mr. Javed”. He felt as if the ground beneath his feet had diluted into a void. His eyes were foggy and his vision blurred. He left the hospital. No, he couldn't gather the courage to face Sudha again today.
On reaching home, Javed searched out the dust-draped violin from under his bed, wrapped in a red cloth. He cleaned it up, and ran his fingers to test the strings. Its tenacity resembled his own during the combat against the ravaging of time. He knew he was left with no other way but to earn money by playing his violin.
In the afternoon, on the sidewalk outside the railway station, when Javed played an ear-regaling tune on his violin, the people crowding around grew inquisitive, one asking, “Amazing, was that a Mozart's symphony?”
Javed gripped his violin and said, “Yes, the forty-fifth one. My beloved, Sudha, is very fond of it. Unfortunately, she's in the hospital.”
Heavy sighs filled the air, and increased the warmth when he added, “She’s bedridden for last fifteen days with cancer. We have so many bills for medicines and the hospital—and now chemo.”
His words were so contrary to the melodious tune he had just played. He bowed with his rickety spine, as if he was performing in some great opera house. His audience of empathetic passers-by filled his upturned kufi with the heartening tune of money.
Sitting stretched on the tiled sidewalk, Javed counted the money. It amounted to a mere nine hundred rupees. He counted again, and huffed in despair.
He noticed a fresh crowd gushing out of the platform, and with renewed hope he held his violin on his shoulder, and screeched across the cords with the bow, sending out an alluring tune. He wanted to a Mozart or a Beethoven to weave heavenly spell over his listeners. As frenzy dawned on him as on his creative moment, suddenly, a click and the string snapped. A chilling fright ran through Javed's spine leaving him wrapped in silence. A momentary stance. He could visualise with a shudder that the cardiac monitor by Sudha's hospital bed had stopped, and Sudha lying breathless, and stiff . His dream had started to fade away.

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