Repeat …

She sat her mother down at the lamp post outside the gate to casualty, and walked away alone to the parking lot. As me, jack sparrow and her other friends followed her frail figure in red pullovers looking for her car, she looked so fragile, as if all the loneliness in the world had converged on her thin frame.

Three hours back, we were in a car to Gurgaon, to watch a show at the epicenter, called ‘Almost 12th night’. A delightful puppet show recreating 12th night for kids and everyone not into “high English drama”. After the show we ran through an art exhibition, ravaged a NIKE 50% sale and headed back to Delhi, still trying to decide where to lunch. The 32 lane toll gate at the new express way was a jam packed mess, as usual. I was humming pure intuition when her phone rang by my side. 30 seconds later, she says

“Hospital jaana hoga, dad ki death ho gayi hai”

The world around us froze to thick ice. The winter chill that was still outside, seeped in to the spaces that we occupied in the universe. She, too numb to cry. We, too numb to speak. I, there again.. one more time.

As we drove to Safdurjung hospital, her first sobs filled the silence we were trapped in. How I hoped I knew her enough to tell her she needed to cry. The twenty something minutes we took to reach the hospital were painful. My fingers were numb. And as I took the car to the parking lot while jack sparrow took her inside the hospital, I realized that memories were flooding back to me.

A few minutes later, at the second floor of the ICU, I see her walk out with her mother, and her relatives, with a stretcher that held the body of a man covered in white, a man who was at a wedding some two hours before with his wife. A man, whom I didn’t know, and the faceless white body was my timeport to a scene that took place two years back in an April, only this time, I wasn’t the one crying….

His body was taken into the ambulance, the guards bowed with respect for a man they never saw. While the daughter, still numb, seated her mother next to the casualty gate, and went to look for her car…

Jack sparrow stopped her from driving and he drove her mother and her home, while I followed…

I wish I knew her enough to be by her side. I wish I knew her enough to tell her how this was about to change her in ways she never knew.. but then, she will know herself wont she?

I am taken back in time though, I saw it all again, like I was there, all over again…but now, like someone unrelated. The memories failed to move me, the images had no strength, and I was not crying… If this is what being an adult means, the world sure has got it all wrong.