Doctor Sahiba

What could one say about Sahiba? That when she grew an opinioned consciousness, the first thing she did was get rid of her surname. It took years to come true of course, accurately, eighteen. ‘Mom, can I please not have Malhotra for a surname? I like yours better, Sharma.’ Her mother naturally disagreed. Some years later, ‘Mom can I give away my surname to someone else?’ Mrs Malhotra stopped responding, until on her eighteenth birthday, she gifted them with an affidavit of her changed identity consisting only of her name. In fact as years passed, the only thing that dissatisfied her most about her boyfriend was his indulgence in his family name. But what one could do with parents, one mostly did not, with tentative partners. Time passed on to carve her into one of the leading cardiologists of the city. Vikram Singh Rajput was, by now, well-settled in his family business having served in the Indian Army for two years. The Rajputs needed a Rajputani for their son.

Sahiba changed somewhere in the space called healing. As a Mumbai-independent woman, she was bereft of any community other than that of cures. Whenever she undertook moderate treks, she wished to die – anything that would deny her the challenge of having to keep up with memories. She returns to an empty apartment each evening and thinks of how she changed. Her name still had a prefix, ‘Dr’. It seemed an impediment to her opinions even though she earned it quite rigorously, yet she was never comfortable with anyone calling her ‘Doctor Sahiba’.

She grew out of everything, but the dreams she had weaved around Vicky – their Seychelles wedding registration, their Lonavala party, their Bandra bungalow and her white benarasi. She often takes it out from the secluded corner of the highest loft and wears it around, like an embrace. On rare days of no patient consultation, or surgery, she would deck up in her Longines, wear her Gucci perfume and clad the white noise of a costume. It screamed of longing, and still sat perfect on Sahiba.

As she aged, and was made to make a will, the only thing that interested her was to make a detailed point about how her body should be given away to the medical college, in her white benarasi. Some opinions never faded even as the whiteness of her saree, and Sahiba herself did.