TWO SISTERS - PART 1

MATURE CONTENT | Reader Discretion Advised | Death

SUREKHA

The year was 1982.

A storm, like never before. Waterlogged streets. Traffic jams, car bumper to bumper. Electricity failure.  Inverters giving up. A tiring, exacting day at the office. Three hours of crawling along the wet, jammed, honking, irritated roads, even at twelve at night. 

Crashed into bed without changing or taking off my shoes. Just as well. I must have been in a dreamless stupor for less than half an hour when my mother was banging on my door, asking me to rush out. 

My father was having a cardiac arrest. 

“We have to take him to the hospital. Hurry. You must stay calm. Don’t panic. Will you hurry? He was fine,  just a moment ago. And now. Ok, can I give him water? What should I do? Shall I thump him in the chest? I have given him those pills to keep under his tongue.” My mother was incoherent. Fluttering and ineffectual, as I was quickly leafing through the diary to get the hospital and the Doctor on the phone.  

“Where is Sara?” I asked. “She is not home as yet,” was my mother’s despairing reply, even as the phone started ringing. “Hello? Hello? Where the hell are you?” she screamed into the phone, “I don’t care, get home, now immediately. How dare you stay out so late?” My mother was panicking now as my father was beginning to writhe with agony. “Get off the phone, will you? I don’t care what is happening to you. I  need to use the phone. NOW.” She was shrieking into the phone now. ‘This instant..” She was banging the phone down and picking it up again to scream into it again, “Will you disconnect? We need to call from the phone. I don’t want to know any more of your stories about why you are late. DO YOU HEAR? Pleaaassee.”  She was sobbing now.  

“Who is it, ma? What is happening?” I was straining from my father’s side.  

“Sara,” she screamed. 

“Why don’t you come here, ma and help me carry him to the car. We need to go now. Forget the phone.  MAAAA PLEASE COME.” I was desperate now as I could see my father slip away. I couldn’t care who or what was happening on the other side of the phone between my errant sister and my mother. 

I was half-carrying, half-dragging my father to my fiat when my mother joined me, totally distraught by now and weeping uncontrollably.

The drive to the hospital was a nightmare. Incessant rain, jammed cars, waterlogged roads, irate drivers were all conspiring to delay that moment when my father could be handed over to the healing hands. The hospital we reached usually in fifteen minutes, was more than an hour away that day. The fateful critical hour. 

He died in the car. In my mother’s arms. Before we reached the hospital. While our car was stuck between a truck and a bus. While the rain was pelting down. While the road was still drenched with torrents of water. While I sat at the wheel and cried. While my mother wound her arms around his still face and kissed him silly. He died. 

My sister did not come home that night.