It had never occurred to Sonali that sadness could have a smell, not until she sat there in that waiting room. It wasn’t that she had never been sad; on the contrary, it had settled so deep within her that one could describe her moods in different gradients of sorrow, as if it were a colour palette. But she could smell it now – a smell so strong, it stung her eyes. The room was divided into small cubicles and not a single one lay empty. People occupied them in varied degrees of wariness – some slept in a death-suspended stupor; others sat head drooping in a way that signalled a fight with sleep; others still roamed about listlessly wondering what to do with all the time that lay in front of them till the next visiting time. On any other day, if she sat there as a passive observer, Sonali would have called this salt-like smell ‘a whiff of collective tears that clung to the air, a sum total of helplessness, desperation and restlessness.’

But not today. In fact, for the past one week she had been an active participant in the general claustrophobia of waiting, caught between living and watching someone die. It occurred to Sonali that she would have not been able to enter this space if she did not have a loved one in the Intensive Care Unit, hooked on to machines for life. And yet, it surprised her that hospitals were so hostile to the living. Wasn’t it the point of having hospitals, to prolong mortality as much as they could, so that a few more seconds could be squeezed into life? Why then, for instance, was the ceiling of the waiting room so low? At 5 feet 4 inches, she only had to stand on her toes, and stretch her arms just a little, before she could feel the unevenness of the ceiling brushing her fingers. Stiff from sitting in the same posture, Sonali decided to buy herself a cup of coffee while her relatives slept, exhaustion furrowed in their faces. There were four more hours left before she could go inside the ICU, and even that time would be split between her, her parents, her Buas and her cousins— people who had more claim to her Dadi than she did.

As she walked past each cubicle, she could see people huddled together in those small spaces that were barely enough for three people. A couple sighed with relief as they discussed with the management about shifting their two-year-old son to a private room, now out of danger; a woman in her fifties cried in a corner, resting her head on someone who looked like her daughter; four young men laughed amicably over a game of cards, trying hard not to look at their watches. Sonali wondered if she had missed the point of the design of this room after all. If this had been a big, airy room, people would have been too occupied following the rules of how to behave in public – be it any form of expression – joy, misery or relief, it would have meant a complete disregard of those around. But the cubicles afforded privacy, which in turn allowed people to share grief within the family, and to console others if needed.

At the vending machine, a mix of coffee, water and powdered milk poured out into a plastic cup. Even though it looked too milky for Sonali’s liking, it tasted better than the coffee Pintu Bhaiya made at home – too much sugar and not enough coffee, a daily battle between Sonali and him, which she lost every day. No matter how precise the instructions were or how many times he was told not to put in any sugar, Pintu Bhaiya made sure to put in three spoons of refined sugar, overcompensating for the bitter taste that lingered in coffee. It was incomprehensible to him that people could like anything bitter, especially after the Starbucks Americano Sonali had made him taste. But his most prolonged battles were with Dadi. In fact, it had become a routine to hear the muffled sounds of Dadi and Pintu Bhaiya quarrel at the crack of dawn, loud enough to stir her from sleep, but quiet enough to not wake her.

Sonali smiled. Spending time in the waiting room had softened the edges of her anger, made her recall things with a fondness she knew was misplaced. After all, did she not nudge her mother out of bed to stop the squabble, so that she could have another hour of sleep? Truth be told, Sonali had never really liked her Dadi. For starters, Dadi kept a hawk-like watch over her mother, ready to pounce if her mother made even the smallest of mistakes. Often, Sonali had heard her Dadi complain to her Buas whenever they came to visit, nit-picking faults of her Bahu, while Amma spent those days inside the kitchen, cooking for ten people at a time. On one occasion, Sonali had felt so provoked that she had shouted at her Dadi in the middle of dinner, “Can’t you see, Amma only does things that you ask her to; does she have no life beyond it?” She had run away crying, leaving her mother to bear the brunt of her daughter’s misdemeanour. Even though not a word was spoken, Sonali’s mother could feel the weight of accusations in her sisters-in-law’s eyes, as they passed dishes between them, complimenting her with high-pitched scorn.

Later that night, as Sonali screeched at her mother with angry tears, Amma consoled her, her fingers running through Sonali’s dishevelled hair. In between sobs, Sonali asked, Ma, why don’t you say anything? Why don’t you object? Why don’t you ask Nani to talk to Dadi?’ Sonali only ever called her ‘Ma’ when she wanted to protect her mother but found no concrete way to do it. Then how will I be any different from all those people?’ It hadn’t occurred to Sonali that complaining, even against what she knew to be unfair, would be understood as the same thing as what her Dadi and her Buas did. The line between right and wrong blurred right in front of her eyes, and in that moment, Sonali admired her mother more than anyone else. In bearing the brunt of her Dadi’s criticism, Amma had made the world a better place, even if that better place was limited to Sonali. Despite the constant tension that pervaded her house, Sonali could see that both her Dadi and Amma loved each other in their own way, especially on occasions when it was not apparent to her.

‘Thora side hatiye please, madam.’

Sonali didn’t realize she had been blocking the entrance to the waiting room – so entangled was she in the web of memory. She made her way to cubicle number 70, the place assigned to her family. The flurry of activity there surprised her. Hadn’t she left them only ten minutes ago in a state of inertia? Or had she been away longer?

‘Where were you? They are shifting Dadi to a private ward.’ Her mother hissed at her.

‘Wait, what? Is she better?’

‘We don’t know yet, the attendant announced her name. Badi Bua has gone to check on Dadi. Call your father quickly. Why are you standing there staring? Hurry up, call your father!’

Before she could, the attendant returned, ‘Sorry madam, mistake. Beena Sharma abhi ICU mein hi rahengi.’ Sonali slumped down on the seat. Dadi, then, wasn’t strong enough to be discharged. Besides, she felt grateful that she didn’t have to call her father. Things had been awry between them for a while, and even though their relationship had taken a back seat in lieu of Dadi’s deteriorating health, all was not well between them.

For years, Sonali had felt resentment brewing for her father, who never seemed to take her mother’s side in any conflict. In fact, he supported Dadi, and took it a step further, blaming Amma for all the faults of their children. They once shared a closeness, that excluded even her brother, but they barely talked now, perhaps once in a couple of weeks, when Baba would unleash a barrage of questions at her. On a particularly busy day, Sonali had snapped at him, ‘Why do you even care? You haven’t turned up for anything in my life! Why care now?’ Since then, their calls had dissipated, and the only news they received about each other was through their mother. Even as their communication increased to five calls a day, now that she had finally arrived in the city to lend moral support, there was still an awkwardness there that they tried to mask, especially in front of the prying eyes of her Buas.

Soon, the confusion subsided. Each of them collapsed one by one inside the cubicle, drained of all the energy that had seized them a moment ago. Disappointment lurked in the way their shoulders drooped; her three Buas, her mother and her cousin, looked like they had aged ten years in the past half an hour, and no longer possessed the knowledge of what to do with their hands. Sonali felt relieved that her father had been spared this gush of sudden hope; after all, he was the one who had lived the longest with Dadi, had not known a life without her. Passers-by gave them sympathetic glances, glad they did not share this family’s plight – a possible surge of speedy recovery quelled by an innocent mistake.   

There were three more hours to go before the visiting hours began at five. Time stretched, looping around the room over and over, so that even a minute felt like an hour, and an hour almost like an eternity. The silence between them felt heavy, a reminder of what could have been but wasn’t, their sighs of relief now forced back down the throat. 

‘Do you remember that story where Amma knit a sweater for Jitender Chachaji?’, Choti Bua piped up. ‘What story?’, asked Ankit Bhaiya, eager to hear tales that had been a secret between the generations before him. Even Sonali found herself attentive; the possibility that life had existed before her was a sudden, exciting proposition. After all, at some point, Dadi must have been young, like she was now. Choti Bua continued, her English now coloured with a British drawl, one that Sonali had made fun of as a child. ‘So Jitender Chachaji bought wool of the deepest shade of pink, and asked Amma to knit a sweater for him. Amma seemed shocked at first, but then knit a half-sleeved sweater within a week.’

‘Wait, Jitender Nanaji is the one who lives in Kanpur, right?’ It had always been difficult for Sonali and her cousins to keep track of who was who. Sonali’s Dadaji had seven siblings, and all of them had just as many children. Distance and infrequent contact had made family relations a puzzle where the original picture had been lost. Like her cousin, Sonali had a vague idea of the people in the family, but who was related to whom and how had always been a mystery. ‘Yes, yes. He is the one. Anyway so, one day Jitender Chachaji was called in by the principal. The principal asked him, “Khud ko bahut hero samjhta hai kya? Ye kis rang ka sweater pehna hai?” Sheepishly, Jitender Chachaji responded, “Ab ghar pe jo kapde milte hai wahi pehnunga na?”” ‘But how do you know this story’, Sonali heard herself asking. ‘Arrey, it so happened that the principal was a friend of Babuji’s. Perhaps the principal had mentioned something to him, because that day he came home and asked Amma, “Jitender ka sweater tumne buna hai ya usne kuch kaha tha?” Amma, sensing a trap, simply answered, “Usne kaha naya sweater chahiye toh hum market se oon laakar bun diye.”” Sonali couldn’t help but notice that even though her Bua’s English seemed foreign, her Hindi had remained the same, with an inflection of Bhojpuri, apparent in the way she used ‘hum’ instead of ‘main’.

Laughter echoed in their small cubicle. The spell of weary stress had been broken, and each person narrated a different memory, turn by turn – some Sonali had heard so often that she could narrate them even in her sleep; some she had never heard before so that even though they were a part of the history, they were entirely new for her; yet others she had lived through, her own memories of Dadi she never knew she had held so close. Even her mother seemed to have fond tales, something that surprised Sonali. Had she forgotten the endless days of reprimands, of complaints behind her back, of being told that she had done nothing in the right way?  Or was this not the occasion to remember that no matter how much you loved people, they often hurt you, even though all you want from the people you love is a respite from living?

If those around were to look at cubicle 70 at this moment, they would see warmth and affection. But somehow, the details seemed glossed over, indiscernible, lost in between those smiles. For example, nobody outside would be able to tell who the daughters or who the daughters-in-law were. In fact, none of them could even tell why this animated family was here in the first place, and whose illness was it that they mourned. In the midst of this happy exchange, Sonali thought about her anger. What had she achieved by being disgruntled, and for so long? She had not returned home for the past six months; she had stopped speaking to her father; she had held her Dadi in contempt for longer than she cared to remember; and with her absence, she had done nothing else but hurt her mother. But was it unfair for her to be angry? Or could relationships change at the brink of tragedy, of death, of situations coming to final gasps?

Sonali couldn’t reconcile with the fact that everything detestable about a person was simply to be forgotten and relegated to a part of memory that died with those who remembered, but thought better of recounting them out loud. Why then were children held to higher moral standards based on what someone else did, especially someone who had passed away, whom they had no occasion to observe and make up their minds about? Sonali thought about Dadaji. After Dadaji’s death, the way everyone recalled him seemed to have been reconfigured; the edges of his faults became hazy, as if they had never affected their family. Dadaji was no longer a person who shouted at people when angry; he was strict, and his intentions were never to harm anyone but to correct them. He was not a person who rudely interrupted conversations by falling asleep; rather, he was always tired from his duties as a doctor, and had to be given time to rest. And despite his many insults to Sonali’s mother, she seemed to have forgiven him, letting go of pain that had made everyday life nothing more than a repetitive, ruthless chore.

But this is not how Sonali remembered him. Whenever she thought of Dadaji, she could see him chasing her with a stick in his hand, every time she refused to eat. She could see him offering a one rupee coin on days she did not cry. How morbid was that, offering a child money so she wouldn’t express her sadness? And still, despite all the moulds of anger Sonali saw in Dadaji, there were moments of affection so strong that it moved anyone who had been fortunate to experience them. He had spent hours teaching Sonali how to play carom and teen patti, took her to conferences in different cities, so that she had a chance to experience the world first hand, outside of the books she loved to read. He even sat down and read to her every night before she went to sleep, indulging her ‘Dada, bas ek aur story’, till it was way past her bedtime. As she saw her Buas, and her mother giggling at the past, she wondered if she wanted them to be silent again, its texture so claustrophobic that even waiting would feel oppressive. Did she really believe that this moment was one dipped in hypocrisy, that none of them actually loved each other but were forced to show it, if only to make the time pass by?

It annoyed Sonali that she had no answers; try as she might, she couldn’t stop thinking about the subtext of these memories that had caused hurt to each one around. The layers pressed on her, the unsaid clawing inside her throat. Dadi wasn’t the person they were now busy remembering, or misremembering. It was only an aspect of her, one that was stuffed with the goodness of her heart. But even when she could see how precarious things were, she knew that some form of love existed; perhaps not the unconditional kind, but one that developed out of knowing the same person.  Years down the line, this would not be a day that any of them would talk about, for in the background lurked death, with all its tenacity. Still, there was something so mesmerizing and complete about this situation that she couldn’t help but feel the collective hope of being alive. At the core of her heart, Sonali knew that in times of distress, no matter how much soreness they nurtured between themselves, they would come back to each other, not as an obligation, but as a reminder that they had shared something meaningful together. So what purpose did the aches of the past really serve, except for reassembling love into our human ways?

In the past hour, Sonali had laughed so much that time had no longer felt piercing in its refusal to pass. This was joy, she knew, borne out of shared intimacy. Slowly, the stories died down, not because they were over, but because each wanted to cuddle these happy memories, and needed a break from remembering. Happiness was, in fact, best doled out in short intervals, when the movements of future were restricted by time. Rejuvenated and famished, Sonali went out to buy a bottle of juice and sandwiches for everyone before they took another nap.

There was nothing else to do now but to wait.