Beep. Beep. Beep.

I turned my 6 a.m. alarm off and groaned as I slowly woke up from my sleep. I sat up from my sleeping position and tried to open my eyes without rubbing them. There is a 70% probability that I will get glasses at the end of this month because there is no way my eyesight is getting better after watching videos on my phone.

I may not have had glasses before, and my eyesight has always been good, but as soon as my college started and preparation for the SSC exam started, I noticed that I had to squint my eyes to look at things on the blackboard.

I just hope the number isn’t that bad. If it did, then I am sure the outfit that I have in my mind for Ankita Tai’s marriage will not be good for me.

Maybe I should buy a contact lens then?

“Morning,” I heard my sister say to me, “Had a good sleep?”

“I haven’t slept like I am used to,” I replied to her as I finally opened my eyes. “Never thought I would miss the Desert Cooler from our Nagpur house.”

“I thought you slept like a baby?” She asks me as she wanders around her side of the wardrobe. “You even watched your favourite K-Drama last night before going to sleep. What was the name again? Ah! Business Proposal, isn’t it?”

“I haven’t watched it yet, I couldn’t watch the new episode as I was studying till last night. I was clearing some points that I have learnt yesterday in the class,” I told her and got up from the bed. “I do want to watch the episode, but I will do it after arriving from my classes today. I just hope that there won’t be extra classes today.”

After coming home from class and freshening up, I can watch the episode while doing my skincare routine.

“बरं बाई, तुला जे वाटतं तसं कर,” She says to me, I nod at her while getting my stuff from the wardrobe along with my hair towel and made my way towards the washroom. “तू कुठे जात आहेस?”

(Okay girl, you do whatever you want.)

(Hey, where are you going?)

“साक्षी ताई, मी फक्त वीस मिनटात आंघोळ करून येते, तेव्हा पर्यंत तू बाबा ला नाश्ता बनवण्यासाठी मदत कर.” I told her, as I stood close to the washroom’s door and smiled. “BYE!”

(My dear sister, Sakshi, I will take only twenty minutes to freshen up, till then you go and help Papa with the breakfast.)

Before she could acknowledge what was happening, I closed the door in her face and locked it from the inside. She banged on the door and almost cried from the other side of the door. I was smiling at her situation but frowned the moment I heard Papa enter the room. 

I couldn’t hear their conversation, but I knew that Papa would trust me over her. “बाळा बाहेर ये?” He asks me calmly.

(Beta, come out?)

“सान्वी सुनील मेश्राम! जर तू बाहेर नाही आली तर माझ्या पेक्षा वाईट कोणीच नाही!” Sakshi added. “भैताड बाहेर ये!”

(Saanvi Sunil Meshram! If you didn't come out this instant, then there would be no one worse than me.)

“Papa, first tell her to stay away from the door, then and only then I will open the door.”

“I have told her to stay away from the door. Come out now, Saanvi.”

I hung my clothes on the clothes hanger and opened the door slightly. I peeked outside and saw that Sakshi was indeed away from the door and Papa was the barrier between us two.

“Why did you go first, Saanvi?” Papa asked me calmly. “You must have a reason for it, I guess.”

“I have classes back to back today, and I have to be there for my typing class right on time so that I won’t miss my bus for today. That’s why I decided to freshen up before.” I replied to him. “I promise that I will be back in a few minutes.”

“You said that you will take twenty minutes!” Sakshi yells. “Make that fifteen.”

“I have long and thick hair, it takes time to wash them thoroughly.”

“I don’t know, I want you to come out in fifteen minutes, and that’s final,” Sakshi says. She knows that I need time to wash my hair thoroughly. I have straight hair, but it also takes time to clean properly. “Deal?”

I glared at her and tried to keep a normal face. “Deal.”

Papa had missed the stare-war between us two sisters and smiled at me. “Now that you both have concluded, I will go back to make the breakfast for all of us again,” He says. “Saanvi, do as you promise, and be back in fifteen minutes, okay?”

Before I could reply, he went to the kitchen, and Sakshi smirked at me. She strode towards me. “If I remember correctly, last time, you said something like, ‘Why do you take almost half an hour to wash your hair?’ So, you will get what you sow, sis.”

“For the last time, I know how your hair differs from mine! And I know that you have curly hair, but that doesn’t mean you will compete with me on how long we both take for washing our hair?”

“You shouldn’t have messed with me, Saanvi.”

“You are my sister, right? You are acting like I took something from you.”

“Wait, I did.” Sakshi recognised and came to her usual self. “Sorry, I–It was out of character of me, to do something like that.”

“Did someone try to steal your boy?” I ask.

“What?” She looked at me as she was caught off-guard and I smiled at her. Gosh, she is such a dork when it comes to Sachit Bhaiya.

“I meant, did someone try to steal your toy or something? You get competitive and territory when someone tries to steal something from you.”

“Oh, that…” she says and thinks about something. “It’s nothing big.”

“Are you sure of that? Isn’t it related to someone whose name starts with S and ends with T?”

She looked at me wide-eyed and pushed me back into the washroom. “Go and come back exactly in fifteen minutes. I am keeping an eye on you!” She says, and I nod my head at her.

Once I was done brushing my teeth and showering, I got outside the washroom with my head wrapped in a towel and saw my sister staring at her phone while she was sitting at the edge of the bed.

“बाई, जा आंघोळ करून ये” I tell her but she doesn’t listen to me. Her old cheerfulness has changed into something else and as I stride toward her, her grip on her phone loosens. I was fast enough to catch her phone from falling. “Sis, what the hell? The phone’s screen would have been cracked because of the fall!”

(Lady, go and have your bath.)

As I put the phone on the bed, Sakshi turned her gaze towards me, and she was shivering. Shit! Is she panicking right now? I kept the phone away from us and sat beside her. I rubbed her back. “Is everything okay, Tai?”

“The result of the bank exam will be declared today,” She answered and I understood why she was shivering. “Do you need water? Or something to cheer you up?”

“I don’t know if I have passed the exam or not, Saav,” She says to me. “What if I failed again this time? I don’t want to fail again. I have wasted so many years already while preparing for UPSC but never passed in the prelim. What if I failed this too?”

“Don’t panic, Tai.” I console her. “I am sure you will pass this exam without a doubt. You said so yourself that the exam went well, right?”

She nods her head. 

“And you didn’t even leave any question unanswered, correct?”

She nods again.

“Then, why are you doubting yourself?”

“I am scared that I will fail again,” Sakshi says. “This is my sixth attempt. Yes, I have taken the UPSC exam five times and I took this exam so that I will atleast have a stable job, but I am afraid that I will fail this exam too. We told our relatives that I was taking UPSC exams while I was preparing for it, and whenever I failed that, they mocked me. They don’t know that I have taken the Bank exam, and if I fail this too, they will mock me again. How will I face them during Ankita tai’s wedding?”

“Do you trust yourself, tai?” I ask her, and she shakes her head. “Arre, you are intelligent! Why are you doubting yourself?”

“I am not as intelligent as you,” She says. “You have been preparing for SSC exams since your first year of college, and you are brilliant considering every time you have been a topper in all of your college exams.”

“But that’s not the poi–”

“You will clear your first government exam without any hurdle but I can’t,” She interjects. “I am twenty-six years old now, I should have a job by now! And I should be able to live on my own too, yet here I am, still living with you guys and not settled in my life.”

“You are intelligent too, tai!” I say to her as I try to make her smile. “We both are different in our way, and you also passed all of your college exams with distinction, isn’t that good?”

“I did pass with distinction,” She says. “You think, I will pass this exam too?”

“You prepared for UPSC since your 12th grade and it has been one of the hard exams to crack. Yes, you didn’t pass just by a few marks but still haven’t lost hope, right? You prepared for the Bank exam and I know that you will pass this exam with flying colours! Trust yourself, Tai. Have a little faith in you, and in god too, because god must have done this for a reason, correct?”

Sakshi is slightly convinced and nods her head. “I should trust myself.” She says. “I will trust myself. I will freshen up in five minutes and pray to god till the result is out.”

It will be a bit extreme. But if that makes her happy, then I am okay with it. She gets up and keeps her clothes in the hangar inside the bathroom. Before she goes I ask. “When will the result be out? I mean, they usually declare the result at night, right?”

“Yes, they will declare the result at Eight in the night,” She answers. “Now that I think of it, it would be extreme if I would pray throughout the day, right?”

“You think?” I say to her and we both laugh out wholeheartedly. “चल जा, आणि जास्त टेन्शन घेऊ नको, कळलं”.

(Now go, and don't take tension about this, okay?)

She smiles and closes the door. Once she was gone, I walked through the living room, and I saw my mom was reading a newspaper. She was sipping on her tea while doing so. “Good morning, Mumma.” I greeted her, and she turned her gaze towards me with a smile on her face.

“Good morning, bachcha!” She says. “I heard you two fighting. Half an hour ago, is everything okay now?”

“Everything is okay, Mumma!” I told her and looked around to see if anyone wasn’t close by to us. “Tai is panicking a little. She will tell you the reason once she comes back from her shower. Just wanted to give a heads-up.”

“Why is she panicking?” Mom asks as she keeps the newspaper away from her. “Is it related to her bank exam?”

I nod and she nods her head as well. “Okay, I will talk to her, once she comes out. You go dry your hair.” She says and I left.

As our house was given to us by the government, in other words, we live in the government employee quarters, we don’t have things that we usually need. For instance, we have brought our clothes drying rack to dry our clothes. As we live on the third floor, which is close to the terrace, we sometimes dry our clothes on the terrace where our clothes get dried in an hour if there is more than enough sunlight.

Once I put the towel on the dryer, I closed my eyes and listened to the birds chirping in the distance. Kids laughed and cheered as they played in the distance and the faint voices of vehicles from the road that were not honking this early in the morning. I opened my eyes and looked straight at the ground, where I saw some of our neighbours playing cricket in the morning and saw Sachit bhaiya talking to someone whom I hadn’t seen before. Who is he?

Before I went back inside the house, I heard someone yelling at me and I turned back to see the ball that had landed on my feet. I looked back at the group of boys and then at the ball. “Boys,” I say and throw that ball on the ground. As I turned back towards the living room, I heard boys hooting from the distance and rolled my eyes at their antics.

I hurriedly went back into the kitchen and saw Papa dishing out Poha on our breakfast plates, and I helped him with that. He garnished it with desiccated coconut and finely diced coriander leaves and smiled. “Here, serve this to your mom. And eat yours too, it will taste good while it still is warm.” He says to me and I put the plates on the big serving plate. “I will come out in five minutes, let me check if the food is fully done or not.”

“Okay, baba,” I say to him. “But come soon, as you know our tradition that we will eat breakfast together.”

He smiles and nods his head. 

“You go. I will be there in a few minutes.” He says to me.

I did as he told me to and put the plates on the tea table in the living room. “Sakshi, breakfast is ready!” I yell from the living room, enough for her to hear this announcement. “Come out soon!”

“She will come when she wants,” Mom told me. “Then why yell at her?”

“Yesterday, she fought me, and said that I did that on purpose,” I replied. “That’s why I yelled the announcement from the living room.”

“Sometimes, I worry that you both will be the reason why I will get high blood pressure,” Mom mumbles. “Why do you both fight a lot?”

“Mumma, fighting is our love language,” I told her and took my plate as I sat on the floor facing the Television. “I love her as much as I hate her.”

“But why can’t you just love her?”

“Because once one of us gets married, we will remember our banters the most, and that’s what I think matters the most.”

“Wow, I never thought of it like this,” Mom says. “So, that’s why you fight each other like this?”

“Yeah, 98% of the time it’s like this,” I tell her. “The 2% is just my jealousy towards how gorgeous she looks. She looks a lot like you and Papa, meanwhile, I look like…my great-grandma.”

“Why do you think like that?” Mom sits beside me on the floor and looks at me. “You look so gorgeous! Yes, nowadays people prefer fair-skin people, but you look gorgeous, nonetheless.”

“I am slightly dark-skinned mumma, we cannot deny that,” I told her as I played with the peanut that was there on my plate. “All of our relatives always compare me with her and I know I shouldn’t feel like that, but it does hurt and make me wonder that maybe I am not good-looking at all. Whenever I look at Tai, I realise that maybe they are right. I should have looked after my skin tone.”

“Do you know why people say that?” Mom asks me. “Do you know why they try to demotivate you?”

I shake my head at her for the response.

“Because they know that your nature is good and you are down to earth, and finding a girl like that is like finding a rare flower in the muddy pond. They have that low mentality that they think your good and headstrong attitude is something that will make them feel low, and they are afraid of you,” Mom says to me. “The reason why you look a lot like your great-grandma is because when I was pregnant with you, she took a lot more care of me. Yes, she was gone before you were born, but you have the same personality and her headstrong attitude.”

“How was Great Grandma like when she was alive?”

“She was the rule breaker of our family,” Mom says as her lips curl up. “She fought with her grandparents when they forced her to leave her studies in the middle because of the marriage, but she stood strong and fought for her education. Meena Fulzele Aaji was one of those who had a post-graduation degree from our Ramteke family. She studied a lot even after her marriage. Raju Fulzele Baba had always supported her dreams, and I always thought that your father is like him, considering he also supported my dreams.”

“You must have missed her a lot,” I tell her. “I must remind you of her, I guess.”

“I do. I miss her a lot,” Mom says. “You have the same personality as her, and considering how you want to study a lot, it’s pretty much obvious you are like her. Some of my side of the family even said that you have a striking resemblance to her.”

“I am still shocked looking at our family tree,” I tell her as I remember the assignment I had during childhood. “When I presented the family tree in the school, everyone was shocked, and they were like: ‘How does someone have a family this big?’ And do you remember the Parent-Teacher meeting after that? Even teachers were curious about our family.”

“Of course, I remember the PTA meeting after that, they kept asking me if you were serious or not?” Mom laughs and then Papa enters the room.

“What happened? Why are you both laughing?” He asks.

“We were reminiscing about some good old memories while eating this Poha,” Mumma tells him. “Poha is delicious, by the way, hubby!”

“I made it according to your taste, my dear wife,” Papa says to her and then kisses the back of her hand. “I am glad that you liked it.”

“I hope I find someone like Papa who will support my decision too,” I mumbled, but it was loud enough for them. “I wish that I find a guy who will love me as much as Papa loves you, and will fulfil all of my wishes too.”

“Beta, you do know that God listens to your prayers, right?” Papa asks me. “You are the only disciple of the god whose wishes god always listens to. Maybe the guy you are looking for is already in Pune.”

“You want a guy from Pune as your Son-in-law, don’t you?” I ask him. “I think it was because I made you watch that Mumbai-Pune-Mumbai movie.”

“What’s harm with a guy who is from Pune?” Papa defends. “He will be well-mannered and knows how to enjoy food as well.”

“Well, whoever he will be, I hope he just lets me follow my dreams and help me fulfil them as well,” I say and eat the Poha with hunger. “By the way, before Tai comes, she has something she wants to tell you guys, so listen to it and help her feel calm. She is anxious because of that.”

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how anxious is she?” Papa asks.

“9.5”

“Oh!” they both gasped in unison. “We will help her feet at ease.”

“You guys were talking about me?” Sakshi asks as she emerges from the room, and we both avoid looking at her.

“No, we weren’t.” We all said in unison.

“Ohkay…Anyway, I will eat this first and then pray to god.” She says and then eats the Poha. “It’s delicious, papa!”

“Thank you, Beta.”

We all ate our breakfast together and then, once we were done, we left to do our stuff. I went to my room, filled my backpack with the notebook and notes given to me from the institute, and kept the backpack in the living room. That’s when our doorbell rang. I went and looked who was outside the door from the eyehole and smirked.

“Sachit Bhaiya aaye hai!” I yell enough for Sakshi to hear this and open the door. “Hello, bhaiya!”

“Hi, Saanvi!” He says. “I brought some Upma for your guys. Mom made it.”

He started looking around for Tai and I smirked. These two are dumb.

“Are you looking for someone?” I ask him, just to tease him. “Come sit. I will bring your bowl back in a second.”

“No, actually, I have to go soon. My friend is leaving, so I have to go,” He says. “I want you to meet him. He is–”

He turned around, and I saw someone leaving. He went in a blur. I didn’t even see his full face. “Arre! Ruk na!” Sachit says to that guy.

“Sorry, bro, I have to go. Coach called me.” I heard from afar and saw Sachit bhaiya following his friend. I gave the bowl of Upma to Papa and went on the balcony to look what happened.

Sachit was talking to a guy whose back was facing me, and I only saw his clothes. Itne subah blue kon pehenta hai? I thought as he wore a blue turtle t-shirt with black pants. He had a decent height, and if my calculation is correct, he looks 5 feet 11 inches. Maybe 6 feet.

That guy talked to Sachit and few seconds later got inside his car. I was getting inside our home but something made me stop there. I turned again and tried to look at the car one more time and when the car was finally gone, I started feeling weird. Something is weird. Something is weird.