Two Things

 Two things happened that night.

Two things which changed Maria and Tony’s lives completely.

Hospital guards walked lazily towards the phone. It rang more number of times today than it rung in the past one year.

‘Hello’ he knew who the caller was, but he still wanted to hear that bastard pleading for more.

‘Patrao what is happening, where have they taken her’ Tony bombarded him with questions without even bothering to respond to his bitterness. He needed him today; he needed him more than he needed his father at a school fight when he was sixteen.

‘You are not the only one having a baby in this god damn world’ he barked.

‘But I am having it for the first time’ what started as a shout came to a humble beseeching in the end.

‘Please I only have you’ he said softly.

‘Don’t worry, they had just taken her in’ he replied.

Tony put the receiver down and took a long breadth.

He turned to Peter and said ‘Its time’

Peter folded his hands in prayer.

Maria looked at her mother, her face saddened as she had not met Tony for two months now. She remained silent, apart from frequent pressing of teeth and sound which let a shiver inside her mother. Her mother was more worried than her.

Maria looked at her mother and said in a feeble voice, it was the last thing she said before the tedious process began

‘You still don’t like Tony, you don’t understand my love’ her eyes were moist with the pain of separation.

Her mother wanted to tell her side of the story, how she fought with all other members of the family but all in vain and in the end she was the first person whom her daughter blamed  and there is nothing she could do about it apart from staying silent and crying out alone.

‘Should i call her now? I will call her now’ Tony asked for peters approval.

He knew, like every time peter would back him, if not for him, Maria and Tony would not have been married, would not have been able to fight the world.

‘Not now, it would take time’ he said sympathetically.

Saying No or asking Tony to hold back is like digging one’s own grave, but Peter and Maria can bluntly say or do whatever they feel like without getting killed.

Tony looked at Peter ready to throw a counter argument but decided to keep quite. He went and sat in his usual chair below the painting which he stole for Maria and gave her as a gift when he proposed her. 

It was the painting of a man cutting trees, nothing great about it, but back then it symbolized that Tony was ready to leave  his current life as one of would-be gangster and would lead a life as Maria wanted him to.

Peter in Tony’s would-be gangster days was his closest Ally, who helped him establish his own small business when he had decided to quit, helped in proposing to Maria, fought with his and her family for them.  

‘Please call him, please call Tony’Maria was shouting in pain. Family and doctors were trying to pacify her. It was not going to be easy on her. It was premature delivery and doctors before hand warned they may go for an operation also. The family was ready for it, Maria was not.

Her mother looked from a small window, which was glassed out in the operation theatre room for the family members to see and be assured that the daughters, wives or mothers are still doing just fine. She remembered the first time her daughter came late from collage, first time her daughter shouted back at her, first time her husband slapped her daughter, first time she used blade against her veins, first time she saw her leaving her home not to come back again, now when she is having her first baby the other firsts looked extremely meaningless. She cried for all those firsts and their lost lives. she cried silently yet again as her daughter struggles for life on a hospital bed in next room.

 Tony signaled Peter to get another bear, who was already high with his four now.  He do not have the stomach to drink big as Maria pokes him the next day after he vomits everywhere the night before and comes for a hot coffee next morning, he did not bother Maria troubling him as long as he gets his coffee.   

Peter struggled to get up and walked sleepily to the store room. All pleasant memories comes in front of you in hard time, as if you have missed something then and it adds to the pain many folds. With his last gulp Tony went back in time when he first saw Maria. She was in a heavenly blue dress with a smile of an angle on her face. She walked past him without noticing him but her sent had left him dazzled for the next four days, till he saw her again. Tony did not wasted any more time. He grabbed her by her hand and proposed her. Everyone knew Tony, who he was and what he does, Maria also did.

 She was not afraid of him like other girls, she faced him, probably this is the character which Tony admire in Maria of all. He asked Tony to get himself sorted first and then think of proposing  her in a nice way. She knew that he would not change and if he continues he would not have guts to face her. She was wrong. Tony with Peter opened a shop in three weeks and when Tony met Maria at <beach name> beach, he was in a rented suit a bunch of red roses in his one hand and a painting in another.

He told Maria that the painting is his last crime and she laughed.

A smile came across Tony’s face as he remembered the most beautiful phase of his life, his life with Maria.

Peter walked in, this time holding the full carat.

‘Its now or never man’ Tony said his hands wet with nervousness, which he has never imagined in his entire life.

‘Its now or never for me also man’ Peter replied and looked straight into Tony’s eyes. For the first time Tony did not understand what he meant.

 Maria’s father kept a tough and uninterested face. He had hardly spoken to her daughter in past two months.  He still cannot forget the dread full day when Tony stabbed broken beer bottle after a huge argument and lots of swearing at each other, into his elder son James stomach just missing inches from the kidney, after James caught Tony and Maria kissing behind  <Some place in GOA >, he nearly died with the attack. If it had been the kidney no one could help him, the doctors said later, if that had been the case he would have lost his son. 

 He still loved his daughter. He was there when they got married, hiding behind the tree and giving his blessing from distance and why not he prayed for a daughter for very long time and only after she had four brothers she decided to join the family.

He would flinch every time he heard her daughter screams and turn her face away from the room. After an eternity he walked to James and said

‘We should call him’

James gave a painful smile. He had forgiven Tony long back.

Tony’s phone rang. He picked up with a trembling hands. In two years of their marriage no one from Maria and his family has directly contacted him. Why now?. Is everything alright.

‘hello’ his voice drunken and shaken.

‘you should ....’ before James could finish his sentence screaming of Maria grew louder and more painful, as if she is getting tourchered.

‘What is happening?, Why is she shouting? What is hapening’

And then he heard it, he was the first one to hear it and he would always boast about it, he heard the most pleasant cry he had ever heard and waited for. He heard the baby, his baby crying for the first time in this world, it was crying as if it wanted his father.

Tony feel on the ground, his hands shaking more with the joy now. Peter rushed towards him, asking, wanting to know more. Tony’s face was wet with tears. He wanted to shout, he wanted to scream, he wanted to celebrate. He could not say a word. Peter kept on pushing. Things happened quickly of which Tony would remember little next morning, he remember mentioning his baby, a kiss on his lips, not momentary a planned one. Hitting Peter with the beer bottle on his head, blood on his drawing room walls and carpet, another call, hospital van, thrown out of the hospital’s emergency room, a bright tube light needling into his eyes a hand and then nothing, nothing but dark, dark as black.

Maria opened her eyes, her mother was holding her baby, it was a boy. Maria looked at her with a sad smile. Her happiness was not complete without her husband. She took it into her hands and stared at him.

‘little tony’ she laughed at her own joke, tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘I understand your love for Tony, I will welcome him into our family’

 Maria looked up. Her mother was smiling.

Two things happened that night.