CHAPTER ONE

              N I T Y A    K H U R A N A

If moving back to the same neighbourhood I had always admired growing up around wasn't enough of a headache, then worrying about what my parents could say about me being still unmarried at twenty-eight is eating away the excitement I am feeling.

There hasn't been a single moment where they have never failed to remind me of my age and my unmarried status. It's been a battlefield now that I am almost nearing thirty, over the phone for a year now.

My parents think if a girl doesn't get married before thirty her life is over.

The calls have been more aggressive now but I am still excited to meet them.

Magnolia Heights looks fancier than she remembered. Coming back here after almost 12 years luckily because my brother bought a house in this luxurious gated community, this place looks completely different from what I remembered. New paint, better security, and gates that feel more like a fortress than a welcome. Still, nostalgia clung to every corner—especially the house next door to ours.

The Saxenas'.

The house of my boy best friend and his older brother—my childhood bully and a nightmare to my adult years. Even though he wasn't there with me, his memories haunted me through those 12 years I was away.

Though I visited my parents every few years or during the holidays so that they don't forget about their only daughter and give away all their money to their ladla beta.

[Beloved son]

As the movers unload my stuff, I find myself glancing sideways more times than I want to admit. There it is — same cream walls, same brown balcony grill, same impossible-to-ignore history. I hadn't stepped foot near that house in nearly a decade.

I moved to Delhi at the age of twenty after clearing my medical entrance exam. It took me two trials but I eventually did it. Now, after completing my MS in orthopaedic, I am finally home.

[MS- Master of Surgery]

Aarav, my childhood best friend moved away to Nagpur for engineering after clearing it's entrance exam at the age of 19. I was unhappy at being left behind but I was delighted for my best friend.

His older brother and my bully had already moved away to Mumbai.

Anirudh Saxena.

The name still itched.

The boy who made fun of my intelligence mocked me for every silly little mistake I made.

The one who never let me live down any mistakes I made.

The one I used to call bhaiya because, well— Indian culture and moral compulsion otherwise meri jutti bhi unhe bhao na de.

[Not even my slippers could pay attention to him]

God, I wish he isn't home and still is in Mumbai, filling Excel sheets with tax audits.

My parents don't know I am coming back. It's a surprise for them.

Before I could reach the gate of my house, the commotion from the movers brought my parents outside.

My mom is shocked to notice it's me and tears fill her eyes as she runs towards me and engulfs me in a warm hug kissing my cheeks.

"Meri beti." She cups my cheeks, fresh tears brimming in her eyes. I encircle her wrist and give her a warm smile.

My father stands beside my mother, trying to hold back tears and not break his facade of a strict desi father.

I break away from my mom's embrace and touch her feet while she gently taps my head giving me her blessings.

I move towards my father with a proud look on my face.

"Apki beti ab doctor ek saath saath MS behi hai, papa." I proudly say and touch his feet.

[Now, your daughter is a Doctor as well as an MS in orthopaedic]

Instead of touching my head, he engulfs me in his embrace, tears falling softly from his eyes.

From growing up in rented houses throughout my childhood to having a house to call mine, I and my parents have come a long way.

The days of living on a monthly salary where the spendings were fixed are over.

My mother urges me to go inside while my father instructs the movers with my luggage.

"Why didn't you inform us? I could have made your favourite dishes." My mom says as we enter our house.

"I wanted to surprise you." She happily says and she rolls her eyes at my answer.

"Why don't you go and freshen up? I will cook something delicious for you?" She says and pushes me up on the stairs and quickly walks away towards the kitchen mumbling how I should have let her know about my arrival so that she could have already prepared everything for me.

I nod my head and drag my tired body up the stairs and towards my bedroom which I had stayed just for a few days whenever I could come home for holidays.

As fate and Aunty gossip protocol could have it, by the time I had changed into a clean kurti and tied my hair back, the Saxenas were already at my house for chai over the news about my arrival.

My mother, overly thrilled, had laid out the entire dry snacks collection.

The Saxenas were always rich and my friendship with their youngest son, Aarav was purely coincidental. My mom was thrilled to become friends with them when we were young.

"And both of them are still single," Mrs. Saxena says with a meaningful sigh, sipping her tea and looking at me like I  was a delayed Amazon package.

I try to ignore it. I focus my attention on the samosa in my hand instead. Or try to, until I feel a pair of eyes flicker towards me.

I look up and am surprised to notice him, sitting on one of the single couches sipping his tea casually.

I involuntary straighten my posture embarrassed at not being able to notice him when I first entered the room.

He is still tall. Now broader. White shirt, sleeves folded. Hair pushed back neatly. He wore glasses now—traitorous sexy glasses. And he doesn't look like he remembers anything.

But he does.

I know he does because when our eyes meet, his jaw clenches- subtle, but there. And then he looks away, casually, like I haven't just time-travelled back to every time he used to make my blood boil.

Aarav, thankfully, is still the same. Grinning, loud and immediately pulls me into a side hug with an "Arre doctor madam!"

Ten minutes later, the conversation is still circling back to marriage like a hungry mosquito.

"Arre mummy, what do you think of having Nitya for bhai?" Aarav playfully asks his mother and gives me a mischievous wink.

My eyes widen with terror while Anirudh Bhaiya spits out his tea.

Me and Anirudh Bhaiya? Married? That's the kind of nightmare you wake up from in a cold sweat. Absolutely.Not.