Yes, he definitely has a problem with Gauri. She has been sitting through the night playing candy crush into the small hours of the morning, the time for his moon to rise and float into the house. A strange feeling of ecstasy fills his liquor blurred senses, as Gulzar's lyrics play in his head "Raat ko chori chori khidki se nange paanv chaaand aaayega". There will be a gentle knock at the door and she will be there, stealthy and bare footed so that she can sneak in without so much as a noise, unlike this woman- the click of the heels of her sandal can be heard even before she enters the house. He has been staying up smoking five packs through the night and drinking, waiting for her. But Gauri is wide awake keeping guard. Why can't she go to sleep? She should have been a watchman somewhere! His senses heat and the liquor blurs all logic, as he advances threateningly towards her with the cigarette burning between his fingers. He reaches for her, trying to grasp her face between his palms wanting to give her a good shake, his eyes narrowed dangerously on hers, but she is too quick like a snake, more alert than him, and very much in her senses.
She may not have a zero figure like that whore next door, but she definitely had more strength, thanks to the appropriate diet her mother had ensured she had, despite her protests. Like all her friends she too had a yearning for that elusive trim waistline! She is quite aware of that cigarette bud burning between his hingers and that it could damage her pretty face forever.
She glares back at him twisting his arm and directing the burning cigarette end away from herself in resistence, and struggles to hold it there. However, as he continues to advance, the burning bud stubs his ribs and singes his skin in the scuffle. But he is too drunk to register the pain. She then struggles herself free and rushes out latching the bedroom door behind her. He shouts and bangs at the door, but the woman who is responsive to every whimper of his seems to have turned deaf. He knows how to handle her. After all they have been married for twenty- five years now. "Open the door or I'll burn it down" He threatens.
It works. She loves her home still. No matter how small it is. Minutes later she opens the door, and moves quickly away out of harms way. "Stay away…talk from far!" She warns from the other end of the room. Her heart is already broken, but she has emerged stronger even as she has watched him turn from a sober person to a quiet drinker and then to a violent one more recently. She has a million reasons to leave him and let him die in ignominy like her friend Sujata's husband, but there is one that over-rules them all. He is an alcoholic and a diseased person, and you don't leave a beloved diseased person to die, more so in his twilight years. So, what if he has become morally bankrupt as well now, cheating on her to boost his ebbing ego as age overtakes them both. She is yet to find a middle- aged man turn down the attentions of a saucy young woman in heat!
"My chest is paining…I need to go to the hospital" He blabbers, knowing his mind games quite well now. She hesitates watching him closely even from afar and then, is by his side the next moment. "You are sweating!" She runs a hand across his forehead. Concern rife on her face. "I'll call the ambulance".
She jabs the numbers on her mobile, even as she rushes to get the Oxymeter. She clamps it on his finger and like a watchful nurse notes the readings. "SPO2 is 95 okay…but the heart rate is only 32! Why? Could the blood sugar be low? You had a proper breakfast and lunch!…Wait, I'll get the Glucometer".
She jabs the needle into his finger tip and takes the blood drop on the strip. The glucometer counts down. "What? Blood sugar Eighteen! You are in hypoglycaemia!". Through the years she has become half a doctor herself, and their home a mini-hospital, thanks to his alcoholism. She rushes to the kitchen and returns stirring spoonfuls of water into a bowl of sugar. She spoons it into his mouth and he gulps it down.
By the time the ambulance arrives his blood sugar count is sixty five and his heart rate seventy. He is feeling much more conscious as they take him on a stretcher and transfer him to the Emergency Room. "Siddharth Pathak is back again!" An RMO shouts and a sister replies, "Oh…he would come even for a fever…We should have a dedication for him." She has seen the wall of dedications in the hospital reception area. It is a white wall with silver stars with names of patients, who donated their bodies to the hospital after their deaths! Over the years, the medical profession has dehumanized further, she notes, to take a patient's death so lightly.
She is quite familiar with the Lifeline emergency protocols that follow. The oxygen mask being snapped on his nose and mouth, the monitor sensor being clamped on his finger, the needle pricks, the search for veins, the IV lines, and the ECG console being rolled in. The sticky round electrodes cling to his body like wriggly wet spiders. The buzz of the machine, the printout taken by a brother and he hears her voice outside the curtains, the nurse had hastily drawn once he was transferred from the stretcher to the bed. "Is the ECG okay doctor?"
"Yes, everything is okay. You took the steps in time. I'm surprised how he survived at eighteen! A few more minutes and we would not have been able to help him". But the doctor's words only aggravate Siddharth. The attention seeker! Always walking away with the sympathy and limelight. Thinks herself a shero! I'll show her. An alcoholic's thinking is always different from the rest of the world!
"Doctor!" He calls. "I want a police officer here. I want to make a statement". He shouts across the curtains drawn around his bed. The curtain is pulled aside and she is there with the doctor and the green clad nurses. Siddharth is looking at her with narrowed eyes, making no secret of his deep hatred for her.
"Okay now you sleep…we will call the cops, when its morning." Says the doctor soothingly. The medical staff don't seem to take him seriously. But who does? An alcoholic is an alcoholic is an alcoholic. Period. Gauri breaks down, but he has no sympathy for her tears anymore. He who cried with her, when her mother died. He was a man who never hesitated to cry, and she respected him for it. Even she doesn't know when he fell out of love with her over the last twenty five years.
"She tried to kill me" He shows the sisters the burn wound in his ribs. His accusation seems to break down a barrage of years she has held within her as she sobs uncontrollably. She should have known she was nurturing a snake up her sleeve!
She knows she has done it in self defense and he knew it as well! It is thanks to that enormous wealth that daddy has left behind that she is able to bring him here again and again, so that he gets the best medical attention. Medical insurance companies have long stopped covering them, thanks to all the pre existing diseases he has! And yet this man thought, she was his biggest enemy! He had joked to her once that if she ever went to jail, he would bring a "dabba" or packed meal for her everyday. She should have known he wasn't joking!
She was crying bitterly, but he remained unmoved. The woman whose tears he had kissed away on many a moments, was crying desolately now and his heart had turned to stone. He was filled with revenge. All he could remember was how she came between him and his bottle, all the quarrels and the cruel words she had flung at him…so unlike Poonam who had acted like a soothing balm on his wounds…the very thought of her, calmed his senses…and he felt himself slowly drifting off to sleep ruminating the beautiful pleasurable stolen moments he had spent with her as he had in the past five years….