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Healing

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Thirty-seven year old, Dr. Hemant Patil had become the sort of man newspapers loved to profile. He was one of Pune's leading cardiac surgeons, attached to Time Heart Institute near Baner. His research papers were cited in medical journals. Former classmates spoke about him with admiration. Hospital administrators saw him as part of the future. Patients travelled from Ahmednagar, Nashik, Solapur, and Aurangabad to consult him. He had come a long way from being that shy kid from a village near Rahuri to the eloquently English speaking successful doctor. His education had been on scholarships throughout. He had been so engrossed in his profession that he had overlooked the idea of getting married. Success had arrived exactly as promised. Yet every evening, after returning to his twenty-second-floor apartment overlooking Baner, Hemant found himself standing on the balcony long after darkness fell. Below him, traffic flashed through the city like rivers of molten light. Construc...
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His Grief And His Conversations With Her

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  Late November in Pune carried a peculiar stillness, the kind that settled over the city after Diwali lights had faded and the winter chill began to creep into the evenings. The air was crisp, tinged with the faint scent of burning coal from roadside stalls where vendors roasted peanuts and corn cobs. The sky was pale blue in the mornings, but by dusk it turned into a canvas of muted orange and violet, as if the heavens themselves were reluctant to let go of the day. In a quiet lane near Bhandarkar Road, Alhad Bhagwat sat on the balcony of his modest yet dignified bungalow (one of the few that remained amidst the redevelopment spree around it), wrapped in a woolen shawl that had once belonged to his wife, Ira. He was seventy-five now. Long retired from his distinguished career at Kirloskar Engineering, a company that had once been the pride of Pune’s industrial landscape. His hair was silver, his face lined with the marks of time, but his eyes carried a restless energy, as tho...
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