Entangled destinies [PART 1] by Mahira

A week later…

At Shekar Gadodia’s instructions, Swara has been installed in one of the private rooms of the hospital with the promise of having a favor treatment from the direction.

It hasn’t been simple to make him accept the idea of interning his elder daughter in the psychiatric service of a public establishment, he argued vividly that it will spoil their name and reputation and people will say that he threw his own daughter in an asylum.

But with the intervention of Durga Prasad for his son’s side, he finally accepted his younger daughter’s arguments… after a year where the best doctors from all corners of the world were engaged; there were no any improvement in Swara’s state. So was remained to lose?

“-this is unacceptable! How can you ask us to stay away?… Swara is our daughter… Ragini, what’s this? How could you do this to your unique sister!? !”

“- please Dadi Ma… calm down… Doctor kapoor, you can’t keep us away like this… Swara needs us, we can’t just let her and go!”

Sanskar raises an eyebrow smirking and replies:

“- WRONG! you need her to not feel guilty for letting her alone! And this is your problem, not mine… At the moment the patient is interned here… He doesn’t need you anymore…. Right now all she needs is ME!”

Laksh tries to argue:

“- what nonsense!?… she’s here for three days now and you didn’t even see her yet, so keep your arrogance to yourself and manage your smart language!”

Sanskar gets up from his desk’s chair and walks toward him slowly before extending his hand in front of his face asking:

“- your keys?”

Laksh’ frowns not understanding,

“- Mr. Patient’s fiancé, give me your keys and let me do your work then please… take my place…”
He pauses letting him register his words before adding sarcastically:
“– chalo… if you think you know my work, I’m sure that I can manage your father’s business!”

Not bearing his behavior anymore, Laksh’s hand lands forcefully on the doctor’s cheek punching him hard:

“- don’t talk about my father, you blo…..”

“- LAKSH!!!”

Ragini’s shouting voice stops him from repeating his act once more. She grips his hand which was handling Sanskar’s collar and continues:

“- what’s this Laksh! Do you even remember why are we here!? How dare you… How can you forget that Swara is in this state because of…”

“- RAGINI!”

Dadi ma’s voice reasons in the small place ending her granddaughter’s tirade!

In their drama, no one noticed the doctor’s scrutinizing eyes detailing and analyzing all of them.. He was having a small smile in coin when Laksh’ backs off looking down and turns back. He’s about walking out silently when he finds Sanskar stepping in his way:

“- you can beat me back if you want… I’ll not stop you!”

“- sorry bolo!”

Laksh is so surprised by the doctor’s calm determined demand, that he stays still astonished for a moment… actually he tried a lot, since they met him a week back, but the man facing him remains a complete mystery… he finds him arrogant, sly and ill-mannered, but there was something else.. Something he couldn’t define in his eyes… something makes him feel awkward and uncomfortable. Maybe, this name… A painful memory clouds his eyes.

“- I-SAID-SORRY-BOLO…”

Sanskar emphases each word looking straight in his eyes emotionlessly obliging him to finally mumble:

“- I’m sorry…”

“- FINE!”
Turning back, the doctor walks back to his chair where he sits comfortably before saying his attention back to his laptop screen:

“- one visit per week, just one person and no direct contact… you’ll be able to see her but no entry to her room”

——————————————————————-

one month later… Swara’s room.

Doctor Sanskar Kapoor enters Swara’s room for the first time late in night a heavy book in hands, he installs himself of the side chair, makes some manipulation on his phone, put it on the bedside table near the the monitor, then finally lands his eyes on her… And for the first time, a sincere smile curves his lips a tender gaze filling his eyes.
In her creme pajama top,
One could imagine that she’s simply sleeping in this curled up position, if it wasn’t her permanent state since more than a year now.

He sits there for long moment, without any movement, observing her keenly, her faces relaxed cute features, her breaths, her intermittent changing expressions, her frowning brows, her small smiles… she seems living a long dream she doesn’t allow anyone to disturb her from. A dream he has to know about if he wants to help her.
He frowns suddenly, swara’s blood analyses results are alarming, this perfect body is deteriorating day by day like a rose in lack of water and oxygen and soon different physical problems will appear heart, lungs, kidneys … her organism is suffering silently…

After long hours of meditation, he finally opens the book he came with and starts reading, it was her personal diary…

” dear Diary… have you ever seen a so old girl starting her diary after her twenties? But kya karo… I just lost Dida, my friend and confident and after her last rites I realized that now I have no one to talk with…”

Sanskar rapidly realizes that Swara has started writing after her Dida’s death in need of a companion to her deep thoughts… it’s about three years back now.

” dear Diary… here I am, back to Gadodia’s Mansion after fifteen years of absence at my sweet Dadi’s damn! Lol

After ma’s death, Dida claimed that she was unable to handle two so small girls alone, this how I finished far away from all of them… I don’t complain if I see the poor Ragini and how Dadi has always been rude in her education for her.

But honestly, I’ve always wondered… what was their criterion in their choice between me and Ragini…”

He makes a pause looking back to her, his thoughts flow to the several times he met that little sister…
Ragini Gadodia is indeed a very loving sister a bit drama queen in her over protectiveness, yet her love to her sister is unconditional.
Automatically, thinking about ragini brings laksh’ Maheshwari to his mind… This guy was always here, difficult to imagine that he’s still attached to this relationship after a whole year of separation…
Maybe this what people call love… Even he’s absolutely sure that that relation was a family and business arrangement… He feels irritated about those ideas… He shakes his head chasing them and return back to his lecture.

” Dear Diary… I’m so happy today, finally Ragini is starting to open up to me, she’s a very shy and reserved girl, I think that the first time when I came back, she considered me as a mad girl!…”
Unconsciously, a smile draws his lips at the last statement.

For the following pages, Swara shares a bit of her family and friend lives, her growing relationship with her sister and her funny fights with her Dadi. she talks a lot about the children of her association and her passion for music which she considers as a cure for every ill in this world.

” Dear Diary… hogaya, my baggage are all done, ok… ok… I know I’m just going for a month to Ladakh and I took all my stuff but who knows, maybe I’ll find my prince charming there and never be back :p

Just kidding na… I don’t believe in such silly things… you should better ask Ragini, I suspect her to have a secret lover in the university. She says that she would like to talk to me when I’ll be back.

And ha, you know what? Mr. Shekar Gadodia, aka mere pyaree baba, said today that he’s receiving his old friend and business partner, Durga Prasad Maheshwari.

Dadi reminded him then that years ago, they’ve promised to turn their friendship to a relation and their children will unite them… bla… bla… bla… like seriously???

I mean, we’re in the 21st century, who thinks like that yet!?!? They can pick up Ragini for that matter… I pass my turn, she’ll be a perfect bahu for the perfect Maheshwari family…

Anyways, good bye for now… see you after one month!”

It was the longest she wrote in the whole book and the last page too…

Sanskar wonders if she continued in some other book her family didn’t bring yet with all her stuff he asked for or may be, she simply never wrote after that… the last date is six weeks before she passed in coma.

What happened in that month? and most important, what happened after that?… that’s what he’ll have to know!

——————————————————————-

Six months later…

It has been six months since Swara is admitted in this hospital’s room without any improvement… or its how her family was considering things!

Ragini, looking at her from the separating glass wipes her tears feeling helpless, Laksh at her side asks her to be brave:

“- Ragini, you can’t continue like that, why are you torturing yourself… Maybe you have to accept that… That maybe nothing can be done…”

“- don’t say that Laksh’, please… look at her, at least she’s no more curled on herself like she used to be…”

“- six months just for that, Ragini? Why don’t you see that this doctor is a charlatan… what’s so important in the position she takes while remaining in coma… look at the marks of ties this mad man kept on her wrists and ankles for weeks… remember how she was suffering trying to free herself… she finally just gave up and…”

“- Exactly Mr. Maheshwari…”

Sanskar’s voice surprises them both in their backs, Ragini wipes her tears rapidly asking:

“- Doctor kapoor… why nothing is working? Why? I read that you made miracle, that you brought people from coma of more than ten years… why not my sister?”

“- Ragini-ji… who said that there is no improvement in her situation? And I already explained that Swara isn’t in coma, for some somber reason, a terrible shock made her mind regress to a fetal state… she has been acting like a fetus in his mother’s womb for all the past time, medicines administrated kept her in that state as they were calming her nervous system… which is the opposite of what she needs!”

Laksh enquires surprised:

“- you mean that she doesn’t need to be calm? We should make her suffer so she reacts? Like you did by keeping her straight and tied up to her chair for whole days… tied her up in her bed all the nights…”

Sanskar smirks as his usual before replying:

“- for one whole year, Swara did exactly what she wanted, stayed out of this world in all kinds of ways… but look at her now…”

He steps closer toward the separating glass and continues:

“- we succeeded imposing an external decision on her body by obliging her to change that curled up position, she resisted a lot but she finished by accepting it and now see by your own…”

A nurse just finished brushing her hair; she takes her hands one after the other massaging them with a jasmine cream… when she puts her hands back over her chest, Swara remains still…

“- it seems so simple but… now the outside world has invaded her own internal world… and this is “miracle”!”

Ragini looks to her sister with teary eyes then asks him:

“- but we want her to come out, Doctor, not to go inside with her…”

Sanskar has a small sincere smile that no one notices before replying:

“- she’s lost somewhere there, Ragini… All alone… she needs someone to go inside to bring her back… and I am this person!”

——————————————————————-

A miracle…

After Ragini and Laksh’s departures, Sanskar goes inside Swara’s room handling the so awaited second part of her dairy in his hands. Finally Ragini has agreed nervously to bring it…

As he used to do for all the past months, he takes the remote control to switch on the lullaby song Sharmistha Gadodia used to sing to her daughters in their childhood and puts on replay mode the video of the Ragini’s birthday, the part where her mother is calling for “Swara”… again and again…

It was their small ritual every night… he comes after the work’s hours, takes a seat, re read for hours her diary or the reports he collected after interviewing her family members several times and discuss with her like he never did with anyone… not only commenting the informations about her life but also telling her about his daily life too…

Sanskar was aware of the reputation he is gaining day after day all over those months, passing every single free time at her side, keeping all her family away, refusing to take any new case… people whisper in his back and corridors, they says he’s obsessed by her. but he really doesn’t care…
looking to her keenly, he let’s go of a sight trying to think objectively … ha maybe he’s obsessed by this mysterious girl!

“- you know Swara? People can’t understand… They will never be able to do… this is because they don’t know you like I do… they don’t know how mysterious are you… I mean, who can be so selfless! You have dedicated your whole life to those children when you’re yet a small girl, you have been separated from your family but still give them the first place in your heart… you know what? I think that you don’t exist… that you’re some illusion I’m having due to my too much work… so Mrs Sanskar’s Kapoor illusion, let’s first what have you know wrote about that summer camp on Ladakh…”

Paging the heavy book, he’s surprised to find it empty… all the pages were white sif one, the first one… A shivers covers his members seeing her hand writing… It was the same but it seemed written in hurry, marks of tears were staining all the paper…

“- OH GOD!!! Someone helps me… how can they do that to me… I…”

An alarming bip comes from the monitor behind Swara’s calm and sleeping stature snatching him abruptly from his lecture.

He closes the book and stands up to check the material but indications seemed normal, he takes Swara’s hand and starts palpating her pulse on her inner wrist his eyes on his watch… everything seemed again normal!

He takes the phone beside her bed and starts moving apart when he feels something restraining him back. He wasn’t dreaming, there was a grip on his hand … something was really griping his hand…

looking there, he confirms that her lifeless hand was holding his forcefully and when he looks down to her, he gasps in surprise, as his heart has just jumped up in his throat his mind registering the sight his eyes are giving him… Two beautiful huge almond shaped eyes were opened!