That night sleep defied the young girl's eyes. She caressed the anklets sensing how his hands must have held them for at least a while. She could not believe he'd cared enough to bring them back for her. She slipped them along with his note in her sandook and then hugged her pillow tight as if attempting to personify it with his essence, wishing it had been him instead. The enormity of how she was going to spend such a long time away from him was just beginning to sink in, her heart experiencing myriad emotions- limerence, the desperation of nascent love. She rolled over her bed in exuberance and the next thing she knew she had crash-landed on the soft rug next to her bed.

"Kai hoyo Sanyukta?" Her mother called out to her as she heard her fall. "Nothing Ma, just tripped, I am all right", she declared; as she hauled herself back onto the bed. What was it that Vidushi had said about him being in the backseat of the car with her? She blushed a shade of crimson imagining what it would be like to feel his lips on hers, to be kissed senseless.

She knew that his education and career would always remain his priority and secretly she was happy because that meant there were less chances of him becoming distracted. Besides she had other things to worry about. She sincerely wished to finish her degree. But her brother Ankit was to be married in Kolkata later that year and she dreaded the thought. Her mother would make sure she was decked up and preened before the community; Marwari mothers made it their mission to show off their daughters before other women whose sons were potential suitors. No matter how understated she was in her dress she knew she would still be an eyeful and represented the ideal future bride- pretty, demure and as an only daughter a bringer of sufficient dowry. If she was singled out she would not even know about it until it was all decided and they would marry her off soon after her eighteenth birthday. The only man for her was Randhir, she could not be anybody else's wife. She had to think of clever, subtle ways to avoid attending the wedding altogether or to stay under the radar till it was all over.

At times she envied Vidushi for her upbringing. Her mother spent a lot of time on business trips away from her children. Renuka was a free-spirited, empowered woman who would never subject her daughter to the indignity of encumbrances. In spite of their freedom both the Shekhawat children were well-grounded. Between her open-minded parents and brother Vidushi would never find herself in Sanyukta's position. She would be at liberty to study what she wanted to, to fall in love, to find her own mate and above all, to live her own life without others orchestrating it for her. Little wonder then that Sanyukta found herself longing to be a part of that family some day in the future, though she knew how remote that possibility was.