Page 225 - Musings 2020

He heard his phone ringing, and as he answered it, he realized that a patient who needed
immediate medical attention had been waiting for him. That being said, he decided on letting
his mother sleep for a little longer and rushed towards the car through the main gate.

The day in itself was showing an aberrant behavior. While the sun rays were diverging from
the sky in the morning, the afternoon was the time of grey clouds. Shiv had been feeling
uneasy since his practice. It was the day of gale-force winds, and it seemed like the wind was
almost howling at him, telling him to go back to his family. Looking through his brown eyes,
he took a deep breath and gave all of his focus into some warm-up exercises.

It was past seven in the evening when Azaan rang the bell of his house, only to discover that
the door was not locked. As he walked inside, he could hear muffled whispers of his mother
calling out his name.

He ran towards her in her room. Her right arm was on her chest and tears were rolling down
her cheek. She was standing against the edge of the bed and was about to fall. At that point of
time, heart attacks were common, but what Azaan saw not only broke him but also for a
moment, made him numb. He felt that he would lose his mother forever. Notwithstanding the
rushing cars, crowded on the road like a never-ending row of dominoes, he was able to take
his mother in the hospital a few blocks away.

After a few hours, when Shiv came to the hospital straight from the railway station, Azaan
noticed his heavy breaths, loose buttons that were about to fall out off his shirt and the
mud-filled boots. Shiv, like his brother, was panicking. Later, he went to talk to the doctor,
while Azaan was making the payment.

When he came back, Shiv pushed him against the wall and held him by his collars. Azaan

was taken aback and tried to wrestle him out of his hold.

“Who do you think you are? Where were you when my mother needed you? Do you even
know what the doctor just told me? He said that we could have saved her if we had brought
her earlier here. Now she has minimal chances of staying alive, all because of you. I wish we
had never adopted you, this day would not have ever come. I would have stayed with my
mother all day.” Shiv screamed, “We were the ones that supported you when you had no one,
even though you were a Muslim, my parents provided you with an education, with love, and
with a family. In return, you gave them nothing but sadness. You could not save my dad and
you almost killed my mother. You Muslims, are always so selfish, God! I wish we could turn
back time. Please, just leave us. We do not need you here. I do not want to see your face.”

With that he released the hold he had on Azaan’s collars and paced right outside the door.
There was a time when brother Shiv used to defend him when his classmates used to tease
him because of his religion, something which he had never anticipated would happen after
the annulment of partition. There still was a divide among the religions and Azaan hated it.
Just because he was a Muslim, did not mean that India was not his vatan . Shiv understood
that that is why, any student, who tried to mock Azaan, always learnt a lesson not to,
something which was taught to them by Shiv. How dynamic and transient life was, Azaan
thought. How the wheel of life had turned, and instead of those classmates, it was Shiv

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