But I digress. Jhanvi and Ashray, combined, two slightly damaged planks laid in opposite directions, bore the weight of their illness. They leaned on each other when the pressure was too much for one of them to handle, and they made it through by finding the one thing that every human being needs.

Love.

39. ASHRAY

39

ASHRAY

The sound of laughter filled my apartment. In the living room, Rishi and Kavya were talking animatedly. In the kitchen, Jhanvi stirred a pot of stew that she admitted was already mostly premade and bought from the supermarket near her apartment.

‘So, that’s us healed then?’ she asked, looking up from the stove.

‘Well,’ I replied, unsure if there would ever be a time when we would be completely healed.

‘Oh! Before I forget—’ she said and, reaching into her bag on the counter, she pulled out a gift bag and handed it to me. ‘I saw these and thought they would look amazing on your shelves in the kitchen.’ I opened the bag. Inside were the colourful pots Maa and I had seen at the market. The ones I’d made a mental note to buy for her once we had moved into our new apartment. ‘Ashray?’ I stood open-mouthed as she asked me, ‘Did I do something wrong?’

‘No,’ I said with a smile, pulling her into a hug, ‘they’re absolutely perfect.’ I unpacked them and asked her to place them on the shelves. She was right. They did look beautiful, offset by the white background.

‘So, are we going to eat this food that Jhanvi slaved over the supermarket counter to buy?’ Rishi called out.

Jhanvi threw a dishcloth at him, causing him to double over, faking a mortal wound. Kavya and I laughed at the two of them playfully bantering with each other. Jhanvi was right. I was the sum total of my Maa’s existence, and this moment would have made her proud, not just of me but of my friends too. That I was living my life, our dreams, with people who loved me and wanted to be in my life. The night of my last panic attack, Jhanvi had helped me put a picture of Maa in a frame, and it now stood on the floating shelf near the flat-screen television. I stood in front of her smiling face, taking a moment to look into her eyes, hearing the laughter filtering from my balcony. Jhanvi’s familiar hand touched my back in the way that had become a comfortable gesture of love and affection between us.

‘You okay?’ I turned and smiled at her.

‘I’m perfect,’ I said, knowing that, without a shadow of a doubt, I was.

EPILOGUE

EPILOGUE