Each organ is now shadowed by water. You can’t see anything in the scans. Every day starts with intralipids, saline, vancomycin, meropenem and butapil. The famous flautist of the town is afflicted by a rare disease. All of it cannot be translated to words and expressed in a language that’s limiting. Some of the portion of this story has been deliberately not included here because the story is long. I’m also wary of my inability to express it in a way that’s original and reflective of the situation. Nobody knows what lies ahead. Everybody is waiting for that final moment. There are not many people around. Friends, relatives, and other family members have already left the place. People can’t stay here for longer. They’ve their own personal lives to attend to. Life is such. Many among us want to forget what we saw, we can’t process it. The sudden halt of life is incomprehensible. The treatment will prolong. The ailment has taken control of the body. The distant past is lurking in the corridors of the Intensive Care Unit, making him remember everything that has happened to him. He graduated in music in the year 1997 from the Institute of Fine Arts, Jammu. The University selected him for a six month internship programme in Athens to learn music. He stayed there for five years under the Government funded scholarship and on return was offered a faculty position in the Central University. Rajan refused that and went on to pursue his art, learning from the masters across the country. Varanasi, Pushkar, Kolkata, Jaipur, Agra, Mumbai, Delhi. His first concert was organized in the Central Hall of the Capital in the year 2006. The audience was enthralled by the performance. He occupied a central figure in the music fraternity. His first international concert was in Crete in 2008. He was also awarded the honorary degree by the European School of Music at Paris. Rajan was living his dream, expressing himself in entirety. His hard work and daily toil finally yielded results. He has created his own unique style of playing a raga. He considers the flute as his temple, the sound his God. He plays in the shadows, under the moon, on the rooftop for the whole night invoking longing and love in our hearts. He loves his music. His rendition of Raag Nat Bhairav is soul stirring. We were together a day before he was diagnosed with this disease. We had seven cups of coffee. He wept profusely. It happened to him whenever he performed; his eyes closed, in trance and the sudden outburst of tears. It was full moon night, the night of Kartik Purnima. It appeared as if his entire body and soul was taken over by some superior energy. He played so many ragas. It was one of those nights which will remain embedded in my heart and memory forever. This is what transpired in the last seven months of his life. He was driving past the City Chowk waiting for the green signal, a minute later he turned cold and stiff like a stone and was not able to move the steering and push through the accelerator paddle. The traffic behind pulled over thinking that the car broke down. An hour has passed. He isn’t able to decipher anything, the policeman shouts at length for almost 10 minutes, not able to comprehend the situation, people around gather, it’s almost 2 hours now, the car is in the centre of the Chowk, people break the glass, he’s mumbling. He was taken to the scan room, the doctor informs the family that a rare tumor has been detected on the right side of the brain and needs immediate surgery so that it doesn’t spread, he’s operated in a hurry, two months later, another scan, the tumor grows on both the sides, consultation with another doctor, surgery is impossible, the skull is filled with pus. He’s now admitted at the Oncology Centre. The attendant brings him to the hospital every month for the life saving injection. During the entire commute, he doesn’t talk much and just looks at the vacant space passing by the car. His eyes don’t blink even for a second, a fixed gaze at the time passing by; as if he has been emptied of everything. He doesn’t feel anything, he hardly expresses pain, his body is all marked by the injections and the tattoos inscribed on the vertebral and lumbar spine in the radiation room. He’s devoid of any aspirations. The flute is his companion. He writes letters to his friends living abroad; narrating his daily ordeals. His mother hasn’t been informed. She won’t survive this. “I’m in the hall. I’ve been assigned a File number. The ward A1 is on the first floor. It has 9 beds equipped with ventilators. There are innumerable wards in the hospital, of different shapes, colors and sizes. It’s the only hospital in the town. Every bed is partitioned with white curtains. It’s another realm. Dreamlike.” The drug is slowly entering the veins of the patients. Each one of them is carrying a blanket, a bottle of mineral water and the blue dye. It’s the chemo ward. Patients are slipping into their quilts, dozing while raag yaman sinks and swells in the adjacent hall, seeping through their bodies, healing them as they battle with the life consuming diseases, making them forget Time and its constituents. There’s peaceful silence, attendants leave their patients, enter the waiting room, lights are turned off as the patients tuck themselves up in the warmth of the flute. They will never be the same. They will never be what they were. Everything will change. Everything will leave. New patients are arriving and the old ones are departing. Life is going on. So is death. Patients open their oxygen masks, remove the saline drips, walk into the hall and sit motionless on the floor. Rajan holds his flute and begins meditating on it. No force on the earth can console him. His condition is irreversible. He’s a young musician, displaced living in a distant land away from his family. He wants to live. He has been reduced to bone. He’s out of breath. Gutted. The fingers holding the flute shiver, he gathers himself and his breath, sobs, presses his fluffy blood stained lips against the flute and continues with his favorite raag for the entire evening. We are crying. Rajan is playing Ahir Bhairav and thereafter the hospital tape plays Shobha Gurtu’s Kajri “Sawan Ki Ritu Ayee Re Sajaniya, Pritam Ghar Nahi Aaye”. Everything remains suspended. I’m lying lifeless on the hospital bed, staring at the long roof above. Life lingers. Life torments me. What will happen to me when the long night approaches? I can’t sleep and breathe. Can I go home? Can I meet my mother? The cancer is in the bone too, inside the femur and the vertebral column. I can’t swallow. They name it bulbar palsy. What about my art? What about the final expression? A dose of Denub every month keeps me up. I’m on the other side of the world now, away from everything, alone. What will become of me? How much life is remaining in my brain and bones? Where shall I go? I’m at the gates wanting to leave, wanting to stay, a year more. What’s going to happen to my family and the world after I’m gone? Why was I here? What purpose did I serve? What was this whole thing about? Futile, Futile! Thoughts assail him; leaving him gasping for breath. He cannot go home. His vitals are haywire. A new patient has been admitted adjacent to his bed. A laborer from the far north was hit by a speeding truck. He’s in coma; on the ventilator. His wife has been informed of the accident. She has travelled all the way from her home, 2000 miles in the General Coach of the only train that passes through their village. It took her three days to reach this place alien to her. She has travelled alone. She speaks and understands the native language. She isn’t able to make anything of the situation. The doctors can’t make her understand the condition of her husband. She nurses her ailing husband day and night. She hasn’t slept in the past seven days. She has four children. Another bed has just been occupied by a child who fell from the hilltop while playing. He’s unconscious. His father is distraught. A month has passed. A daily routine of tests has been set in motion: arterial blood gas, venous blood gas, chest x-ray, USG, ECG. The central venous catheter has been inserted near the neck. Rajan knows there’s no headway. His veins are all punctured. The body stands completely wasted; legs have metamorphosed into thin wooden shafts. He’s immobile, vegetative; trying to reconcile with his condition. He’s left with a lone attendant who’s helping him on the bed, turning him left right, noting his saturation, systole diastole. The woman massages the legs of her husband day and night. She’s hopeful of his recovery. Rajan won’t ever forget the stoic expression on her face, the unwavering dignity in her demeanor. There’s nobody on the bed the day after. The sheets are stained with body fluids. The machine has stopped beeping. The body has been tied at the legs, draped in white. The woman is nowhere in sight. She’s sitting near the main door of the ICU ward. Her husband is no more. She’s alone. She has to perform the last rites on her own. The body has been moved to the mortuary. His vacant bed has been replaced by a young patient who has suffered seizures. The boy has no memory of his past. He doesn’t recognize his parents who are accompanying him. He’s out of breath. He only talks about a place abound with snow. A snow clad mountain. A village draped in white, some other place, the place from his past, from his previous lives, the land of exiles, a happy dream and the sad reality. Has he really suffered memory loss or is he faking? Is it deliberate? The past torments him and the present is disturbing. He wants to be in an unreal place that feels real, a portion of Time that heals him and transports him out of this pain and agony. The present moment is bone crushing. Is there a way to escape this? The boy is wakeful; giggles throughout the night, continues with a lengthy monologue on life, exodus and the endless opportunities lying ahead. He talks about shifting to his dream city in a month or two, about his customized apartment on the 90th floor of a skyscraper. He’s hopeful that he will regain control of his senses. He has to return to his college and appear for the internal exams. Rajan is contemplating on the human condition around him. He doubts his own journey and struggle. He’s dangling in between the real and the unreal. He has lost sense of the time and the purpose of life. Everything is transitory, all human life a fleeting moment. Why did I choose this arduous ascent? What have I achieved? The young girl on the other bed just passed away. She was on the ventilator for two months. She howled all night. The ward was her home. Every doctor and nurse knew her. She had breathing issues. It’s all about breath, its rhythm and the movement through the trachea. She was only 17. Her mother is inconsolable. Mother kisses the knees of her daughter, caresses her forehead. All she wanted was a glass of cold milk and a plate full of mango slices. She always insisted on the specific variety of mangoes that appeared in the market before the monsoons. The mother has been forcefully taken away from the body. Rajan talks about his unrequited love for the first time. Nobody knew the story around it, not even his close friends, family members and other acquaintances. He never mentioned it in any of his conversations with us. Rajan is a private man as far as his personal life is concerned. He didn’t mention the name even now, only that he loves somebody and that he needs her most at this point of time in his life. His inability to inform her is what weakens him from inside causing more pain and mental agony. A month has passed. The kidneys have stopped functioning.  I made persistent efforts for the entire day to visit him once for the last time in the ICU. Nobody is allowed to enter. He suffered cardiac arrest last night. I’m guided by the head nurse through several colored rooms. They put a face mask and a blue apron on me. I’m in a big hall blinded by glaring lights. The space is partitioned by white curtains and aluminum sheets. I can count all the patients in this ward. All of them are intubated; looking up. There are five nurses at the nursing station. I’m standing near bed number three. The window pane near his bed opens to the full moon. The doctor is making notes on the long sheets. The page mentions day thirty two on the top. I look at the screens adjacent to his bed. His vitals are bad. He has just been sedated. I gather enormous courage and shift my gaze towards him. His face is miserable. He has lost all hope. The eyelids are static, gleaming pupils alive, moving up and down. He nods his head sideways asking me to leave. I can’t translate that expression into words. I will never forget the color of his face. It’s indescribable.  It broke me. He has given up on life. His memory has drained, he hardly remembers a thing. He has lost the very concept of minutes and hours. Rajan twitches his eyelids for the final time. “I’m surrounded by menacing darkness. I’m frightened like a goat waiting to be slaughtered. My condition is pitiable. I am not expecting a happy death. Can death ever be a happy experience? Maybe or maybe not! I never belonged here. Life didn’t happen to me. I’m yet to find the final expression. What about my music? It’s all incomplete. I haven’t reached. I’m going to miss the places I’ve inhabited; the walls of my room, the hanging portraits from my childhood, my desk, bed, the book shelf, the space outside, the trees alongside the boundary wall, chirping of birds, sunrise, sunset, all the colors, the orient ceiling fan, rains, summer, all the seasons, my flute, routine practice/sadhana, each one of my family members. Where am I going? I don’t know. I don’t want to leave. Why so early? All I need is a blank spot of memory so as to forget this agonizing journey. I’m preparing for the final departure, away from home. The moon is shifting places; sinking into the haze, I’m in the pyre, so that was it, I’m ice cold, can’t feel a thing, it has started …………”

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Sushant Dhar’s short stories have been published in various magazines including The Punch, Outlook, The Bombay Review, Muse India, Kitaab, New Asian Writing and others.