It would be a stretch to say I've fully disguised myself in a way that fits the fashion of Maithili's new colony. But with my hair barely half an inch long and my lean, five-foot-eleven frame now etched with veins and muscle, I think I pass as an industry worker—if not entirely, then at least halfway.

Maithili's new world isn't far from ours—a suburb that lies just beyond the colonial farmhouse where we held my father's rituals. I hesitated before coming here. That farmhouse. That street. This entire town. It's a place that shouldn't hold any significance for me anymore, yet it still presses down like a second sky. It was the first time in three years that Dad asked Mom and me to come for something—a celebration, no less. Twenty-eight years of marriage.

We were hopeful. For a moment, Mom and I let ourselves believe this could be a turning point. I hadn't seen her smile like that in years, a smile unclouded by alcohol, held up instead by the fragile scaffolding of hope. She packed for both of us. Carefully. Almost giddy.

We arrived to find him in the yard, holding tongs in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other, barbequing for a woman not much older than me. His mistress. He'd wanted us to meet her. To welcome her. To make her part of our invisible family.

For the first time, I saw fury take shape on my mother's lips, sharp and venomous. It was one thing to live in the illusion of a marriage when Dad still had the decency to pretend. It was another thing entirely to stand there and watch him drag that illusion into the daylight and set it on fire.

It's funny, how things unravel. How threads snap. It was a coincidence, they said. That Dad got drunk that night. That he stumbled into my mother's stash of sleeping pills. That I woke to Mom's frantic knocks at my door in the dead of night, just after he'd taken his last breath.

Pure coincidence.

Now, I stand outside Maithili's house. The sky is bruising into twilight, the air thick with the kind of silence that clings to places like this. I'm dressed in a baggy checkered shirt and acid-washed jeans, the kind of clothes that might belong to an industry worker—someone faceless. Someone forgettable. My palms are damp, and I shove them into my pockets to hide the trembling. The house looms in front of me, smaller than I imagined. Faded paint, a sagging gate, a single light flickering in one window.

I press the doorbell, and the faint sound of a cuckoo's call drifts from the other side.

The door clicks, its bolt shifting with a muffled groan, the sound of metal sliding against metal. Then, the crooning creak of the door, as it yawns open in the dim light.

I stand there, holding my breath, words—excuses forming at the edge of my tongue, but they die as the person takes shape in the light. I never imagined it would be Maithili who would answer the door first.

'What are you doing here?'

She's already at the gate, her neck twisting in that familiar, anxious gesture, eyes darting over her shoulder as if to check for something—or someone—just out of view.

My heart races, as if I'm the one who'll be caught speaking to a stranger, forced to explain why and who.

'Can we talk?' I ask.

I watch her through the delicate lattice of the iron gate, the spaces between the bars narrowing my view. Her hair spills loose around her shoulders, strands caught in the low, lazy light. A scrunchie clings to her wrist, a sign that she was in the middle of tying her hair.

Her voice drops to a whisper. 'No. Get out.' She checks back inside.

'Please,' I add.

Her stare drills a hole in me, trying to convey things she dares not to speak. The silence presses in, thick and loaded, like the space between us is a wall.

Finally, she exhales, 'I can't.'

I try again, my voice softer, but insistent. 'Just ten minutes. I promise. I can explain to her ... if you let me.'

She flinches and mutters a quick, cutting, 'No!'

'Bahu! Kaun he?' A shrill voice rings out from inside, and I instantly recognize the command in it from yesterday—the kind that doesn't ask, but demands, as if the question itself claims an ownership of the person being addressed.

It's her mother-in-law. Of course. She's asking who's at the door.

'Gurudware se Sevadar aye hai!' Maithili answers back as panic settles in the form of a divot between her eyebrows.

I snort at the lie. A Sevadar from the Gurudwara? Me? I glance down at myself—if anything, I look like someone on the run. I haven't shaved my beard since the last rites. I look unkempt, unslept, and uncouth. Unruly, unshaven, and unfit for public view—though I can't quite name all the "un-" things I feel right now.

'Please,' I whisper, the word slipping out before I can stop it, but she's already gone, disappearing behind the door.

I wait on the ramp, the open door feeling like a promise of her return. A minute later, she steps back into view, a periwinkle dupatta draped over her head. I step back as she opens the grill gate, steps out, and shuts it softly behind us.

'Thank you,' I murmur, but she doesn't spare me a glance. Her eyes remain fixed ahead, her pace steady.

'We have half an hour before the prayers at the Gurudwara are over,' she says, the words clipped, almost dismissive.

'Yes, I understand,' I reply, nodding, falling into step behind her.

She doesn't slow. 'No!' Her voice sharpens. Without turning, she mutters, 'Don't follow me. Take this road and turn right.' Her hand gestures to the alley on the left. 'You'll find the Gurudwara on the other side of the road,' she adds. Then, without another word, she strides forward, moving purposefully toward the street.

I don't hesitate. I sprint through the alley, my pulse quickening—not from the exertion, but from the thousand things I need to explain, the apologies I have to offer, the chances I'm about to ask for—and most likely won't get.

I take off my shoes outside the Gurudwara and step in the shallow marble channel at the entrance, filled with water for cleansing feet before entering.

My eyes scan the crowd, searching for a flash of periwinkle amidst the sea of reds, whites, and pinks...

And then I spot her. She's seated on the steps descending into the pond at the centre, the calm ripples at her feet seeming to mirror the stillness in the sag of her shoulders. I sit beside her, just far enough to respect the space between us.

She turns to look at me, and for a moment, I'm frozen—her gaze cutting through me like a winter chill, pinning me to the earth with a force stronger than gravity. It's worse than when we were enemies. Far worse.

'What are you here for?' She asks, her gaze locked with mine, and I see nothing but sheer madness in her eyes.

'So many things,' I reply, meeting her intensity with my own quiet sympathy. 'But I want to start with saying that I'm sorry. Sorry for faking our relationship at the beginning.'

'And then, I suppose, it became real.' Her words aren't a question—neither a guess nor a statement.

She's mocking me, mocking my audacity to stand here after everything I've taken from her—her home, her dreams, the future she envisioned for herself.

'Yes, I really fell in love with you,' I say.

She doesn't ask when, though I wish she would. I want her to, but I know it wouldn't matter. The truth would sound like a lie no matter how I said it.

It was early—so much earlier than I'd ever admit to her. I remember the eggs Shlok and Vatsal slipped into her locker, and the way it set something alight in me. Not anger. Something deeper. A need to stand beside her, to shield her. It wasn't a game anymore. I couldn't fake something that came so easily, something that felt so devastatingly real. I tried to fight it. God, I tried. But the time I spent with her became the only time that mattered, the only time that felt like living.

Unbidden emotions shimmer in her eyes, catching the glow of the lamppost overhead, before she bites down on her lip. 'It doesn't matter now. This is my home and I've made peace with my reality.'

No. No. No. She can't mean that.

'But your reality can change,' I say, my words rushing out, frantic and desperate. 'It's not what you wanted, Maithili. You wanted Mai. You wanted to become a chartered accountant, didn't you?'

Her laugh is bitter, hollow. 'There are so many things I didn't want, though. But they happened anyway. And when they did, I was left to pick up the pieces. Alone. I was sacked from school three months before final exams. I was forced to marry.' Her voice shakes before cracking and catching in her throat and she looks away, shaking her head as if to banish the weight of the words she's just spoken.

She stares into the evening.

Above us, the satsang prayers hum through the radio mounted beneath the lamppost, the melody spilling into the air and weaving itself with the faint hymn drifting from inside the Gurudwara.

She drags the edge of her scalloped dupatta across her cheeks, the glass bangles on her wrist jingling faintly with the motion. I force myself to look away from her, bracing for the bulk of whatever comes next, steeling myself for the blow.

She sniffs, her voice low but sharp. 'I was forced to marry a factory worker. He worked in the same factory as my father. Nine years older than me. And I was nineteen. She was right.' She mutters the last sentence to herself and stills. Something hardens on her face. I don't know who she is talking about but I don't ask.

I don't think I am in the capacity to.

'I was raped by my husband.'

Then she looks at me, daring me to react, forcing me to not just hear but truly listen, pausing to let the weight of her words settle, twist, and sting. And they do.

I can't move, can't breathe. My stomach churns violently, my fists clenching in my lap to stop the tremor in my hands.

'I surely didn't want that,' she says and smiles in pain. 'And you know the law here. Filing an FIR against him cost me every rupee I'd saved for college. You don't know what they tell a woman who goes to report marital rape. You don't know the looks they give you. But then I tell myself, it could've been worse if I didn't have that money in my account. He wouldn't be in jail. I'd still be in hell, accepting it as my fate. Thanks to you and your brilliant idea—Shark Tank RSVP.' Each word lands like a staccato.

'So yeah, the point is, I wanted a lot of things. And yet, here I am, stripped of every last shred of hope I once held.' She opens her palms in front of her to make me look at how very empty and hopeless they are.

Her hands drop, and then she adds, 'and here you are...' She lets the words trail off, unfinished, though her eyes say everything she doesn't.

I swallow hard, the lump in my throat threatening to choke me. 'I know it doesn't matter now—my words, my apologies. I can't—' I sniff, struggling to keep my voice steady, wondering when my face became so wet. I whisper, 'I really miss you. There wasn't a single day that I didn't think about you, or stop loving you.'

'Well, don't blame me for stopping at some point,' she says, as if she's been waiting for this moment to say these words, waiting to make me feel the weight of what I lost. 'I had to. I didn't...' She stops, the words catching in her throat, as if she's measuring whether I'm hurt enough yet.

She doesn't finish, and I realize that maybe I look broken enough for her not to say the rest. She had to stop loving me. She didn't... She didn't have the privilege to keep loving me.

'We were together for just over three months, and then we were apart for seven long years. I don't feel anything,' she says, her voice flat, like she's explaining something factual. Like it's enough reason to sever what was once there.

But she doesn't need a reason. I was the one who broke us.

'But I do,' I say truthfully.

'Oh, right, that's all that matters, isn't it? Your grades, your life, your ambitions, your feelings—everything about you should always come first, even if it means ruining someone else in the process.' She scoffs. 'You haven't changed at all.'

The prayer stops and I understand that it's about time.

I take a deep breath. 'I know. I know I'm privileged, and I'm fucked up. That won't change. But one thing has. I've never known love—not like this. But I do now. I didn't know it could hurt this much. And you made me realize that.' I stand, towering over her small figure, her eyes still trained on me but tired now, as if all the fight has left her.

'There's hatred in your eyes,' I say, my voice steady despite the turmoil inside. 'Hatred I know I deserve. No matter what you say or do, I'll keep trying. Until I see it change.'

'Into what?' she asks.

'Indifference,' I say, locking my gaze with hers. 'I'll leave once I see indifference in them.'