"It takes more courage to die than to live", he thinks woefully as he squats beside the tracks, blinking to keep out the already hot, late morning sunlight. He had failed again in his third attempt at flinging himself in front of a train. The first time his courage had abandoned him completely and he had moved away to safety just as the mammoth was upon him. He had to wait for about half-an-hour before the next train came thundering down the tracks, but he was better prepared this time. He had inured himself against the shock by closing his eyes, but the train had given such a sudden and loud toot that he had jumped out of the way in plain fright.

"What a coward I am" he had berated himself as he waited through the advancing morning for the next train, which took even longer to arrive. No more false starts this time, he said to himself as he wedged his feet into the tracks on both sides and stood squarely staring at the brown engine. But he was not prepared for the look of total terror on the driver"s face. The poor man was standing up in his cubicle, leaning forward, looking horror-stricken and it seemed that it was him facing death, not the man on the tracks. In that last second that separated him from death, some impulse of kindness or perhaps compassion had moved him to hurtle his body out of the way. And so, here he was, sitting beside the tracks alive, his mind dazed by defeat, his heart gone numb and his body assailed by hunger and thirst. "If only there was a third choice" he thinks wearily, "I do not want to go back to my life and it seems I cannot die".

He had got out of bed early that morning not having slept the whole night, his mind numb with sleep but still holding on to the one clear thought that he must kill himself that day. He had tidied up the little house that he rented on the outskirts of town, as a kind gesture towards his kindly landlord, who had unhesitatingly rented him the house a few days earlier even though he was a perfect stranger and a newcomer in town. He had made himself a cup of tea purely out of habit, but had not eaten anything. What was the need anyway, he was going to die. Then knowing that a long-distance train was due soon, since the house was close to the tracks, he had latched the door from outside and walked for some distance till he had left the town behind him and the tracks ran through marshes on both sides. And had waited for that first train.  

As the day advances, the sun beats down relentlessly on him, glinting off the tracks and boring into his eyes. There in the lonely wilderness, the vapour that simmers and curls up from the hot steel seems like the ghosts from his past dancing in his hazy consciousness. "The third choice, the third choice" his brain hisses as sleep grapples with anguish in its fevered spaces. Finally, just when it seems that his demons have overpowered him and possessed his soul, he passes out.  

He wakes up to whiteness, white walls and a whiter ceiling. The idea of heaven seems likely, until he feels the most indescribable thirst assail his throat. The notion of hell is just forming in his mind when his eyes fall on the upside-down bottle attached to a tube plugged into his arm. 

"Ah!" a voice says from the other side of the bed, "you"ve woken up at last". A dusky young girl in a white sari is looking down at him in mock reproach. "Do you know how long you"ve been asleep?" He shakes his head, which is already throbbing mightily. "For 24 hours", she says with a flourish. "Ok then, can you tell us what your name is and where you are from." He shakes his head again, even though it hurts to do so, because he"s sure no words will come from his parched throat. "Come on now, give it a try," a briskness has come into her manner and she waits with her pen poised over a pad. He passes his tongue over his dry lips wanting to give it a try, and she taking the cue gets him a glass of water. Finally after many efforts, all he can manage to say is "I don"t remember".

"Hey Bhagawan!" she says a look of alarm coming into her eyes. She puts the pen and pad down and hastens from the room. Thereafter, he has a steady stream of visitors, some infrequent like the policeman who comes to take his statement and his photo, and some regular like Tara the nurse, and people in white coats who ask him questions. To all of which he has only one answer, "I don"t remember". Finally, after many days of examining him and the evidence, they reach the conclusion that since there is no distinguishable injury or illness, the damage done to him could possible be psychological. He is declared an amnesiac, and it is decided that he be moved to the psychiatric hospital at the earliest possible opportunity.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Shabana scans the local newspaper. It has been two months to the day since her husband Shoaib went missing, not having arrived home one day from his tailoring shop. The next day, his best friend and next-door neighbour Javed had urged her to report him missing to the police, but some inexplicable hope had held her back. Over the weeks, her restless, probing eyes had searched for his face among the faces of strangers in busy crowds, in marketplaces, at the dargah, with fading hope. The gnawing fear in her heart had risen to such a pitch that she had come close to hysteria, but some indomitable hope had steadied her mind and allayed her fears, and so she searches the yellowed pages, newsprint smudging her fingers, hope rising and falling with each turn of the page.

Then to her complete astonishment and delight, she sees him looking back at her from a tiny photo deep inside the newspaper. He looks haggard and tired, and his cheeks seem to have shrunk a bit. The newspaper informs her that he has lost his memory. They are looking for his next of kin or for any information about his background. She flings the newspaper to the ground, puts on her burqa, grabbing her cloth bag on her way out.

He is pondering the blankness of his mind, looking for clues behind closed eyelids when he feels a tightening and a weight around his feet. All he can see when he opens his eyes is a burqa that is kneeling on the floor, has draped its arms around his feet, and has buried the burqa-less part into the sheet. "Shoaib! Shoaib!" she says in muffled sobs over and over again, and finally raises her tear-streaked face and hands heavenward and cries "Hey Allah!" He takes this chance and retreats his feet, and Tara hearing the noise bustles into the room. She stands there for a moment taking in the scene and lays a gentle hand on the woman"s shoulder "Who are you, bibi?"

"I"m his wife", she says getting to her feet assisted by Tara, "oh, I"ve been so frantic with worry since he went missing. Allah ka lakh lakh shukar hai! I"ve found him at last." 

"Can you come into the doctor"s room, you need to talk to him."

So after much deliberation and delay and signing of papers, he gets discharged and taken home, which is a tottering, old house in a bustling basti. The lanky, young lad whom he meets first regards him with a suspicion bordering on hostility.

"How dare you come back after abandoning us like that?" His voice on the verge of manhood, bristles with anger and hate.

"Come on Saif, he was not well, he has lost his memory, be nice, he"s your Abbu after all."  Shabana plays the nervous conciliator.

But the tension in the room is immediately diffused by the arrival of little Salma who bursts into the room like a ray of sunshine suddenly released, her face lit up with the brilliance of a thousand suns, her eyes sparking with the delight of having her Abbu back. And hanging on to his arm, besieges him with questions, "What did you get for me, Abbu, Ammi said you had gone to a faraway place, what did you see there Abbu? Did you miss us? Do you know how much Gudiya missed you. I prayed every night to Allah that he bring you back soon. Why did you not write to us, why did you not phone?"  And some inexplicable force unlatches the tightly shut doors of his heart, moves his hands and he gathers her up in his arms and clasps her to his chest, much to Shabana"s joy and Saif"s surprise.

Over the next few days, Shabana gently informs him that he is a tailor with his own tailoring shop and two assistants. That there is a lot of work piled up at the shop, and that she with some assistance had been able to clear off only the urgent work. She had invented the story that he had to rush to his village to look after his father suddenly taken ill and so could hold off for a while. But now she is willing to teach him the cutting and sewing skills that he had once taught her.

The daily namaaz poses a greater problem, so Javed shepherds him to the mosque everyday and standing in the last row imitating Javed"s actions, he makes peace with the Creator. 

The greatest challenge, however, are the nights. Even he with his hazy memory realises that it would take him just one act of intimacy for Shabana to find out that he"s an impostor masquerading as her husband, so he circumvents that by going over to Javed"s house after dinner where they spend hours sitting under a foggy sky smoking cigarettes until Javed begins to nod into his chest. He then tiptoes into the bedroom and slips into bed taking the utmost care not to disturb a sleeping Shabana.

But his most luminous moments are the ones in which he finds little Salma, fondly called Gudiya, sitting up in his lap prattling on about the day"s events as if they were of national importance while he plays with the curls around her face and watches the light glinting off her eyes. And sometimes when she curls up and sleeps off on his chest, he feels the tenderest of love welling up within him and surrounding her with its protection.

Young Saif however remains aloof and suspicious. Little by little he bridges the gap, in tiny steps over sometimes smooth, otherwise rocky terrain. When he finds out that Saif is cricket-crazy, he buys him a cricket set complete with bat, ball, stumps, pads, cap and Saif is soon the envy of the teenage boy gang. They spend hours together watching cricket matches on TV, rooting for their favourite players, occasionally quarrelling vehemently, the argument always won in his favour when Gudiya on his lap declares with finality, "Abbu is right!" Shabana looks on with fond indulgence, her eyes shining, her face glowing with love at this her little family in their warm, safe home.

They develop a ritual for their Sunday evenings. The whole family pile into Javed"s auto and they take off to where their fancy takes them, the only rule being that they must go to some part of the city where they have never been before. Returning at night, having gorged on ‘golgappas’ or ice-creams, replete, happy and sleepy. 

Late one evening he is interrupted in his measuring and cutting by a white-faced Javed, who informs him that Gudiya has not returned from school. Saif had gone home thinking that the little girl had left earlier with her friends. But on finding that she had not reached, he and Shabana had gone to school looking for her, where she had not been found, then to her friends' houses where she had not been found either. They search through the night, along the way registering a complaint at the police station. They search well through the next day, until finally late in the evening a far away police station reports that the mutilated body of a little girl had been found and ask them to come and identify the body. His mind is blank through the journey except for of a dull despair that somehow seems familiar.

At the police station they find a doll broken and post-mortemed beyond recognition. As he bends to sign the papers, the words "Rape and murder" jump out at him and grab him by his throat. In the blinding instant that follows, all thought and emotion are wiped out from within him, leaving just a furious rage that is high-voltage in its intensity, streaking across his body in large electrical flashes. His knees buckle and he staggers on his feet and it takes all of Javed"s persuasive powers to just get him back to his senses and sign the remaining papers.

The only thing that keeps him alive on the journey home is the rage that has now consumed him. He feels there is not one but two corpses in the vehicle and if it wasn"t for the pulsating fury, he would gladly have lain down beside the little body and willingly allowed himself to be buried with her.

The next day, after the last rites, it is announced that all the men are meeting in the Khan Saheb"s house. He walks in last with Javed beside him into a room already crackling with tension. The elders of the community are seated in the front and some men are squatting on the floor, but most are standing in various poses of anger and aggression. Some of the younger ones even have bottles and hockey sticks in their hands. 

The voices that had lulled on his entry rise up around him once again.

"The guilty must be found and punished…"

"Yes, if we leave it to the police it will take years…"

"I think it is Mohan who did it…"  

"Yes, people have seen him lurking around the school many times…" 

"They say he even buys the little kids candy…"

"What business has he got in the school?"

"Maybe he took her away during the afternoon recess…"

"Yes, I"m pretty sure it"s Mohan, even my daughter has complained…"

"Yes, let"s go after Mohan, I know where to find him…"

"Yes, Mohan is our man, let"s go……"

"Mohan, Mohan," voices rise up from his past, in anger, in pain. Images that he had long hidden in the corners of his subconscious mind slither into his brain in slow-motion sinuousness. "Mohan…" was that plaintive voice his mother"s? "Mohan" the explosive rage must surely be his father"s. "Mohan…" was all the clouded vision of his wraithlike wife could manage to whisper as the last breath had escaped her lips. He stands transfixed, his body rigid, his face twitching and sweat pouring from his pores as the Past momentarily rousing itself from a long slumber, takes over his brain pushing out the Present, like a sudden, unexpected and unwanted flashback in a movie. But the director, the Present, thinks otherwise. It will not be ignored and in urgent impatience hastens to take centre-stage once again in the form of a violent shake to his shoulder by Javed"s hand.

"They are waiting for your decision, miya", Javed leans towards him and whispers in his ear. The Past retreats in slow-painful-motion and his eyes focus on the men around him, all of them standing now, some already walking towards the door. "They are going to look for Mohan and who knows what will happen if they find him. I think there"s going to be a riot."

He musters the courage he does not feel. His stomach suddenly feels like a bottomless hole, from which his voice rises in an unnaturally high-pitched octave, "I don"t think we should go after Mohan. After all we don"t even know if he did it." He falters, as the stark image of a mutilated body flashes across his mind. But the rage that rises falls back defeated into that black pit of despair. "Let the police find the killer. The Koran does not say that we must take the law into our own hands. Does the Khan Saheb agree?"

All eyes are now on the head priest who is looking at him with a quizzical ex-pression. He nods imperceptibly.

"But we cannot let the killer go scot-free…" An angry voice says from the door.

"But we don"t know who the killer is…" His heart is now pounding almost as loud as his voice.

"We"ll go to their mohalla and "ask" until the killer confesses".

"But it is my daughter that has been killed and I do not wish blood on my hands or on my conscience".

"Are you saying that we just sit around while "they" rape and murder our women and kids?"

"All I"m saying is that let the police find the killer and let law take its course." 

"But he might never be found…." "Or it might take years…"

"Then let"s wait for a month and see, if they police have not found him, we"ll meet once again and decide."

He turns to Khan Saheb "I have to be with my family…", bends his head once, turns and hurries out of the room, the light had begun to hurt his eyes. Javed catches up with him and they fasten their pace towards home.

"You most certainly averted a riot, miya. Those people in there were ready to kill any man belonging to Mohan"s community." 

When they reach home, he asks all the mourners gathered there to leave. Wailing women and silent men are perplexed by this strange behavior but leave one by one. After Javed leaves too, he takes Saif by his hand and they go and sit beside Shabana on the floor mat, his arms around them both. They sit there for a long time, tightly knit in their grief, oblivious of hunger and thirst, only conscious of the pain that somehow seems to have dug a hollow in their inside and filled it up agonisingly with itself. By midnight Saif is leaning against him asleep and Shabana has fallen into a troubled slumber in his lap. Only he sits through the agonised night, feeling the soft touch of curls on his cheeks like fairy wings and echoes of an angel voice, gurgling with glee, saying "Abbu, catch me……"

Life has this funny way of flowing on and taking you along in the flow. And so, as the weeks pass they force themselves to get used to the silences between broken-off sentences, as though they are waiting for another voice to finish them off. And those who disappear from our lives, they reappear occasionally in photo albums, smiling life-like, or in stray toys we thought we had thrown away. And on our tongues, as names we somehow
forget to forget. 

His nightly ritual of tip-toeing into the bedroom well past midnight continues, and on most nights his heart shrinks with concern and swells with love as, by the diffused glow from the streetlight outside, he sees Shabana"s face. A frown sitting between her brows, face still glistening with drying tears and she in the arms of a pained sleep. 

But today she is awake as he sidles into bed beside her.  She is turned towards him, her face resting on her palm and her hair loose and softly coiled on the pillow. "You haven"t slept yet, it"s well past midnight."

"I want my Gudiya back," she says by way of answer.

"But Shabu, you know it is not possible, Khuda ko yeh manzoor nahi hai."  

"I don"t care, I want her back. If not her then another like her." 

Her eyes are like black glowing coals in the semi-darkness as she moves towards him, her presence suddenly strong and heady on his senses.

He freezes immediately.

"Do something, Shoaib, do anything, but give me a daughter".

She has raised herself up slightly and her free hand is clutching urgently at his kurta lapel. She must have seen the flicker of desire in his eyes for she relaxes her grip and starts to unbutton his kurta.

"Shabu….some other day… please…" fear pounding the chest on which her hands are busy. 

And then looking down at him, gazing directly into his eyes, she says, "What are you afraid of, miya? That I"ll find out you are not the man I married?"

"You knew…." It feels like he has been struck by a thunderbolt, "…you knew all along?"

"No, not in the beginning, then I began to have suspicions, which were slowly confirmed, but I didn"t know what to do or whom to ask." 

She pauses, her eyes still steadily looking into his, "I thought about it for a long time, especially after Gudiya died…", her face softens with wistfulness and a curious mixture of pain and love shines in her eyes.

"I realised how happy you had made my children, how whole-heartedly they had accepted you as their father, even more than they had their own father. That drunken, miserable man, all he would do was beat us up, he only spared Gudiya, but that was because she could hide herself well." She fights with the hardness that has somehow crept into her eyes and her voice, bravely fighting back the tears.

Then the pain disappears from her eyes and only love remains, "finally I realised that it is not enough for a marriage to be solemnised in front of society, you don"t become life-partners by law, you have to earn the right with love. And you opened your heart so completely, I had no choice but to let you walk into mine, aur phir bas rooh se rooh mil gayee." 

And gazing into those shining eyes he sees complete acceptance. And a love that had  transcended mere details like community, caste, religion, or even a piece of paper concretising a ceremony.

And taking Shabana into his arms for the first time, and surrendering completely to her womanly softness, the three words "the third choice" flashes unexpectedly across his mind. 

~~~