Page 235 - Till the Last Breath . . .

‘I am just kidding. And it’s beautiful. I am happy for you. On the other

hand, who wouldn’t marry you!’
‘Aw. That’s sweet now.’ She blushed.
‘Where are your parents?’ he asked. And just as he did, they heard

footsteps approach the door of the hospital room.
‘They are here—’ she said and stopped as she looked at two unfamiliar

faces staring all around the room, their eyes wide open and their mouth
agape.

‘Ishhhhh!’ the woman shrieked and immediately rushed to Dushyant’s
bedside while the man stood at a distance with one hand on his chest and

the other on his face in disappointment.
Pihu couldn’t make out what the woman was saying behind the wailing
and the sobbing. She kept caressing and kissing Dushyant’s face and hair

furiously. Pihu didn’t get a single word she was saying in her weepy
Bengali accent. For the next half hour, the high-pitched crying continued.

Sometimes, the woman looked at her husband and said something to him in
angry sobs. She couldn’t get the words, it was in Bengali after all, but she

could tell that Dushyant’s father was being blamed for everything.
Meanwhile, Dushyant, who was at first unmoved, even irritated, had

started crying and had taken his mother in his arms. His father still stood
there motionless, watching the whole saga unfold. What a jerk! thought
Pihu. It was only after his mom scolded the man that he came near the bed

and sat on it. The revulsion and disgust found its way back to Dushyant’s
face and he couldn’t meet his father’s eyes. While his mom cried, he just

looked away from his father. Seeing his son’s antipathy, the father excused
himself while the woman still had her face buried in her crying son’s chest.

Pihu’s parents walked in too, after a little while, and sat beside her. All
three of them were looking at the woman who was sobbing feverishly on

the adjacent hospital bed. Pihu filled them in on who she was and told them
a little about how Dushyant and his father didn’t see eye to eye. Her mother
nodded disapprovingly as if to say, ‘Who would want such a son?’ Pihu

promptly reminded her of how it was Dushyant who had saved her life even