Click. Click. Click.

Sweet cravings soon after a meal — yes, that was what I had as I clicked open each image on the screen. One incognito Window with three different tabs for decadent chocolate cakes, drool-worthy laddoos and chocolate chip cookies oozing with love.

I was a foodie to the core and Googling food pictures during my free time at work was kind of an addiction.

As one may wonder, of course it was terribly old-fashioned to use Google to search for food pictures in this era of Instagram but hey, when you worked in a company like HighGen, you had no choice but to do that because social media was blocked on our computers and we were also not allowed to use our phones within the department during office hours. All these for security reasons, apparently.

Yes, my workplace was more like a school than an office.

An office full of strict managers, useless meetings, unreasonable rules, stupid warnings, and even heavy monitoring on our computers as if we were terrorists. This was why even if we did use incognito to escape the IT department's eyes of scrutiny, we often got caught — thanks to the hogging bandwidth!

It was 1:15 pm and the whole floor had resumed work just after lunch break. Me being the eager beaver that I was, I had already completed most of my daily tasks by then.

So, there I was taking a break from work and daydreaming about all the good food in the world when my new trainee Devi's voice brought me back to earth.

"You should lose some weight, akka."

She said it so randomly, striking a wide grin with her braces, that it looked as if she had no clue about how it made me feel.

Maybe nobody ever knew how it made me feel.

"Lose some weight" — the three inevitable words in my life, which I absolutely hated but somehow could never get through a day without hearing. Because people loved pointing it out to me like it was their job.

These three words had the power to constantly haunt me wherever I went. In fact, I've heard it so much so often that ideally it should not have even mattered to me anymore but somehow it did.

Every single time it hurt. It hurt because it was the truth.

I had to lose weight. I knew it.

I was not the fancy 'curvaceous' or sexy 'voluptuous' kind of overweight. I was the outright F word. I was truly FAT.

So, yes, "lose some weight," was very easy for others to tell but damn hard to do. If only it was the other way around!

People often spoke as if I was fat because it was my choice. They were with the view that I was not doing enough to shed the extra pounds. Different people held different opinions. My own mother thought it was because of my uncontrollable food habits.

But what everyone failed to realize was that I tried more than anyone I knew. Every day, every week, I attempted a new fancy diet that I found online. But somehow none of it worked on me. All I seemed to lose was motivation and never the weight.

Sigh.

I shook my head and continued to type on my computer but Devi did not seem to stop.

"You will look nice if you lost weight, don't you think so?"

What she asked did not seem like a question but rather a statement. A truth. An idea which the whole world believed in.

The relationship between size and beauty was inversely proportional. The more you weighed the less attractive you became — or at least that was what the society thought.

Wow by the way, did you just see what I did? I came up with a mathematical joke to talk about society's standards of beauty. I mean, I was that smart! But hey, none of that mattered, okay?

All what people cared about was my size. The first thing they noticed about me. The only thing most chose to comment about me. The one thing that always made me feel inferior.

Pathetic.

"Yeah, I am trying to," I finally replied to Devi's question with a fake smile.

"How? By looking at food all the time?" she asked with a chuckle. Typical.

The funny part was that she herself was not thin and even she loved food as much I as did. There were times when we did our food Googling together.

The thing with Devi was that she wasn't a bad person. She just had a foul mouth that constantly said rude things. Her words did often make me angry but I mostly forgave her because she was just a 20-year old kid.

Yup, you heard me right. I called a 20-year old a kid because...well, time for confession.

There was a reason why Devi and several others at work called me "akka" (a local term that means elder sister). I was almost a decade older than most of them.

I  WAS NEARING MY THIRTIES!

Of course it was just a month after my 29th birthday but I was already feeling 30 mentally. That was the thing about aging, I guess. You felt old before it even hit you.

I tried to ignore Devi's stupid comment and get back to food surfing but I couldn't. My mood was spoilt. So, I decided to get back to work.

Add. Enter. Delete.

Three functions that ruled my life. And by that I did not mean anything philosophical. It was just my mundane job. Monday to Friday, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, that was all I did.

It was the same thing everyday. Tasks were boring but easy. It was the kind of work that required you to use your brain at very minimal capacity. And HighGen was the type of company that limited your skills and crippled your dreams.

There were only two kinds of people working here. One, the younger generation that came in like freshly-baked cookies soon after leaving school and then quit after a year or less because they found a better option elsewhere. The other was the slightly older generation who stuck around for too long that they found utmost comfort in this environment and thereby feared taking risks of changing jobs. I belonged to the second category.

Anyway, I did not hate my job or workplace. It was okay. I had good corporate exposure. I got my meager salary paid on time. I got enough off days. But then, there was something lacking.

It was mediocre. It was not the best option out there. It was my seventh year in the company and I felt stagnated.

Despite my high performance and hard work, I never saw career growth for a number of reasons, which included HighGen being a male-dominated workplace, priority given to selected communities, and me failing to be a Manager's favorite or bootlicker.

Ideally, I should have become a Team Manager two years back but thanks to the Project Manager Jacob who always overlooked my achievements and the Group Manager Eran who absolutely despised me, I did not get the promotion. It was instead given to one of their chamchas, Paul — who again whole-heartedly hated me.

Now, why did the men with power hate me so much? I did not know. Or maybe I knew.

It was because I was not one of those docile characters. I was not the typical innocent, sweet, soft heroine. I was the alpha female who always stood up for myself, which men could not bear to see. It was not my fault. My dad raised me that way.

My mom, however, considered my mouth as my greatest curse. She said that I got into trouble because I spoke too much. And maybe she was right. But I did not regret it because that was who I was.

"Alisha, are you done with your work? Can you come here for a while?"

Well, that was him and I knew exactly why he asked me that question.

Oh no. Stop. Don't even think that. I wasn't trying to introduce the hero of my story when I mentioned a 'he'. Because the truth is I had no such men in my life. Just random, stupid coworkers. And Roshan was one of them too, except for the fact that he had an undying open crush on me, which was sort of annoying because he was annoying.

Have you ever met a guy who easily falls in love, that too with every single woman in his life? Well, that was Roshan. He caught feelings faster than most people caught the common cold.

He and I joined HighGen at the same time and for the past seven years he has had a crush on me. Although, he claimed it to be because of my English language skills, I was never sure of that reason. Having worked with him for so long, I knew him enough to think maybe he had fat fetishism. Eww!

"Yeah. Why?" I asked knowing very well what his answer was going to be.

"Can you please help me type this email to the client?"

Typical. Interrupting me seeking email help was what he did best! He was so dumb that he could not type a simple email without errors. Or maybe he was lazy. I guess he was just used to getting things done from me.

I rolled my desk chair to his workstation, typed the email for him and returned back to my spot by when it was time for tea break. Nice!

Even though I was not the type to drink tea in the middle of the day, I did go to the cafeteria everyday without fail because that 15-minute break was much needed for my sanity! So, I got my phone from my bag and walked out of the door.

I turned the internet on and messages started flooding in from 'The Rehan Sistas ' WhatsApp group. 101 messages! Well, that was a lot but very normal behavior among my sisters. Nothing to be surprised about. Mostly they shared cute pictures and videos of my niblings or updates about new recipes they tried but no, it wasn't the case today.

Today the discussion seemed to be totally something else.

I quickly skimmed through the messages to get the gist of it. All I could see was my eldest sister Shaheen pulling the others' legs with her cryptic messages "Await very special news 😉" and "Coming soon 😇"

She had a habit of doing that. Whenever she wanted to make an update, be it an important announcement or some silly family gossip, she did this kind of thing. It was one of her cheap thrills, I guess.

I did not know what her special news was but I started laughing because the whole conversation was funny, especially the first few messages. Daneen, Aira and Zoya were clearly impatient to know it.

Daneen: Are u pregnant? 😱
Aira: seems like that 😂
Aira: Badhai ho didi! 🤣
Shaheen: What's that? 🙄
Aira: it means 'congratulations sister' 😜
Zoya: she didn't deny being pregnant🤰🏻
Zoya: that's it! 😲
Shaheen: noooooo 🤦🏻‍♀️
Zoya: then what? 🤨
Zoya: tell nowwwww
Shaheen: Wait 👻
Aira: Aiyo drama 😡
Daneen: yeah just tell us already 😩
Daneen: pleaseeeeeee
Shaheen: let Alisha also beg for it ☺️
Shaheen: then I will tell 🤭

"I'm sure it's something silly," I muttered under my breath as I scrolled down to find something rather depressing. Aira had asked whether it was about some proposal for me and Shaheen  after misleading her with a few messages had finally said "yes someone's coming home 😍"

That explained her overexcitement. My family always got too happy at the thought of a groom agreeing to meet me. It was after all the second stage in the marriage interview process.

Oh no. Not again!

The bride-seeking drama was about to start after a very long time and was I even ready for it?

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