Healing Hearts

Chapter ~ 1

MANGALORE

There was a room at the end of the corridor where no light had entered in 6 months.

The curtains stayed shut in the daytime. The bulb had been dead since March and nobody had replaced it, because nobody had been asked to. There was a bed, a cupboard, a chair with clothes on it, and a girl sitting on the balcony ledge with her knees drawn up, looking at the sky.

She had been afraid of the dark once. Genuinely afraid, the sort that needs a corridor light left on. Now she lived in it. It had turned out to be the only place that did not ask her anything.

6 months since the night that had taken everything. Her parents. Her sleep. Her music. Whatever it was inside a person that makes them want the next morning to come.

6 months, and it still found her every single night.

"Nandu. I have been calling you for 10 minutes."

Nandini turned her head.

"Sorry, dii. I didn't hear."

Priya Murthy stood in the doorway with her hand still on the light switch she had learned not to touch. She had been standing there for a while before she spoke, which was also a thing she had learned.

"Arjun is here. We leave tomorrow morning. Won't you sit with him a while?"

Said Priya.

Nandini's lips moved into something that was not quite a smile but was clearly meant to be one, and Priya took it, because these days she took whatever she was given.

"Send him in."

Nandini went into Arjun's arms before he was properly through the door, hard enough that he took a step back and laughed.

"All right, all right. Missing me already?"

Said Arjun.

She did not answer. She held on and did not let go for a long time, and he stroked her hair and let her.

"I will miss you," she said into his shirt. "You won't forget me, will you? Arjun, if you ever leave me I will not survive it. Promise me."

Said Nandini.

"I am not going anywhere."

Said Arjun.

He said it easily, the way people say things they have not been asked to think about, and he kissed her forehead, and she closed her eyes.

He sat her down on the edge of the bed.

"When are you coming to Mumbai?"

Asked Nandini.

"Soon. Very soon."

Said Arjun.

"You know I cannot manage there alone."

"You won't be alone. Priya di will be there, Navya will be there. Just look after yourself for me. Eat properly. You have got careless."

Said Arjun.

Nandini nodded and said nothing.

Then, after a while: "Where is Aneesha?"

"On her way"

Aneesha arrived 5 minutes later and stopped in the doorway with her arms folded.

"So. Somebody is all set to abandon us and run off to the big city."

Said Aneesha, pulling a face that was supposed to be tragic.

Nandini shook her head and hugged her.

"Stop the drama."

Said Nandini.

"Oh, wonderful. The boyfriend gets I love you and the best friend gets stop the drama. Note it down, Arjun. Note it down somewhere."

Said Aneesha.

"Leave her alone, you lunatic."

Said Arjun.

"Make me."

They went on like that for a while, the two of them, performing for an audience of one - and the audience of one had gone somewhere else entirely, sitting perfectly still with her eyes on a patch of floor about 4 feet in front of her, hearing none of it.

Arjun was reaching to touch her arm when Priya came in with a tray.

"Chowmein. And hot chocolate."

Said Priya.

"Priya di, I love you the most in this world and I want everybody present to witness me saying it."

Said Aneesha, already reaching.

Priya laughed, and the laugh brought Nandini back from wherever she had been, and for a few minutes there was noise in that room. 4 people, one tray, an argument about who had taken more.

Nandini ate when Priya put a hand on her shoulder. Not before.

They left at 10. Goodbyes at the gate, promises to call, Aneesha shouting something from the road.

Nandini said she was tired and went to her room.

PRIYA'S POV

You will not sleep. I know that. I know you better than you know yourself.

You were closer to them than any of us. You were their whole world and they were yours, and I have watched you carry it alone for six months and I have not been able to take one gram of it off you.

I am asking now, because I have nothing else left to try. Whoever is listening — send her somebody. I do not care who. Send somebody who can reach her, because I have tried everything I have and I am not enough.

She is the gentlest person in this house and she is in more pain than any of us and she will not put it down.

Please. Give her a reason.

POV ENDS

Priya sat on the sofa in the dark with her eyes closed, and the tears came, and she let them, because there was nobody left awake to see.

She had done this before. Years ago, in another house, she had sat exactly like this. But she had not been alone then. She had people. Nandini had nobody her own age who understood, and Priya had spent 6 months being that person for her and had never once been able to say aloud that she was drowning too.

She did not hear Navya come down the stairs.

"Dii."

Priya wiped her face fast.

"You're awake. Did you sleep well?"

Said Priya.

"Stop it."

Said Navya, sitting down beside her.

"Stop doing that. How long are you going to sit alone in the dark and cry and then ask me if I slept well? Do you think I don't know? You are the strongest person alive in front of everybody and the weakest one the moment the room empties. In six months there has not been one single day when you have not cried."

Said Navya.

"Navya—"

"Do I look like a child to you? I understand everything. Please. Talk to me. I know what is happening to Nandu is breaking you, but you have to hold yourself together first, otherwise you cannot hold anything else."

Said Navya.

And Priya Murthy, who had held it together in front of doctors and neighbours and lawyers and her own younger sister for half a year, put her head on a 19-year-old's shoulder and came apart.

"Dii, stop. Please stop, you are my strong Priyu dii—"

Said Navya, and started crying herself.

"How am I supposed to stop?"

Said Priya.

"Have you looked at her? Really looked? It hurts to be in the same room. I have never been this useless in my life. I am so tired of being the strong one. Why her, Navya? What did that girl ever do to anybody? First us, and now her."

Navya held on to her.

"Do you remember what Ishimaa used to say?"

Said Navya.

Flashback

Priyu. Navu. Listen to me properly, both of you.

Never lose hope. It does not matter how bad it gets. Even if everything around you falls down at once - you keep that one thing alive inside you, because a person can survive without almost anything else, and without hope they cannot survive an hour.

And do not let a situation decide what you are. We are all far stronger than we have any idea of. You will find that out one day, and you will be surprised.

Flashback ends

They sat with that for a while, and then Priya sat up and wiped her sister's face with her thumb.

"Enough. No more crying tonight."

Said Priya.

"You first."

Said Navya.

"I never noticed when you grew up."

Said Priya.

"Somebody had to."

Said Navya.

They went up together. Tomorrow there was a flight to catch.

Nandini was lying on her back with her eyes open.

The tears came without any effort now, which was somehow the worst part - they arrived on their own, at their own convenience, and she had stopped noticing them until her hair was wet. She was staring at the wall and trying, without much conviction, to fall asleep.

She had not slept a full night since that night. There was a version of it waiting for her every time, and it always started the same way, with rain, and it always ended the same way.

She had not sung since either. She had not danced. Those had been the two things that made the world quiet, and they had gone with everything else, and she had not looked for them.

There was a knock.

She wiped her face fast and shut her eyes.

The door opened. Priya stood there for a moment.

She knew. Of course she knew - she had been reading that girl since she was 8 years old, and the breathing was wrong, and the hand on the sheet was too tight. And that was the thing that hurt more than anything else that day: that her sister had begun lying to her, and had learned to do it well.

She came in anyway. She sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed the hair off Nandini's forehead, and kissed her there, and pulled the blanket up over her shoulders, and went out.

Then she went into the bathroom and locked the door and broke down properly.

Her phone rang.

She looked at the screen and answered it and could not say anything at all.

"Priyu? What happened? Is everything all right - is Nandu all right? Say something, you are frightening me."

Said Aman.

"Aman. Nandu—"

"What about her? Priya, listen to me. Stop crying for one minute. Nothing is going to get solved while you cannot breathe. Take a long breath. Slowly. Again."

Said Aman.

She took two.

"Better?"

Asked Aman.

"Hmm."

"Now tell me."

"She isn't all right. Six months, Aman, and she is exactly where she was. She has lost herself somewhere and I cannot find her and I do not know what I am supposed to do."

Said Priya.

"I know."

Said Aman.

"She needs time. What happened to her is not the kind of thing that heals in 6 months, and honestly, it does not heal the way you are hoping it will. It settles. The scars stay. What she needs now is for us to still be here when she is ready, and that means you cannot fall over. Not you."

Said Aman.

Priya let out a long breath.

"Sometimes I think I am the luckiest woman alive."

Said Priya.

"Now this I want to hear."

Said Aman.

"Because of you. I do not know how I would have got through any of this without you. Thank you. I love you."

"In that case, madam, I think I deserve to be thanked properly."

Said Aman.

Priya laughed, wetly, in a locked bathroom at half past one in the morning.

"Shut up and go to sleep. I have a flight to catch and so do you, and I will remind you that I do not tolerate people who arrive late."

Said Priya.

"Yes, madam."

Said Aman.

"Keep laughing like that. Go on. Goodnight, Priyu."

They left for the airport at six.

3 women, 4 suitcases, and a house locked up behind them with a dead bulb in a room at the end of the corridor.

None of them knew what was waiting in Mumbai. That is the mercy of it. You are allowed to sit at an airport gate at 7 in the morning with a paper cup in your hand, entirely ordinary, entirely unprepared, while your whole life is already being rearranged somewhere ahead of you by people you have not met yet.

A new city. A new life.