I’ve had a horrendous night with little sleep and nightmares that I don’t remember. I’ve also got this nasty feeling in my stomach—like I’m about to sit for an exam but I’ve ended up preparing for the wrong subject.

Normally I really enjoy my Sunday and make full use of it either reading magazines, giving myself a pedicure or trying out a new herbal face mask. Today, though, I just can’t seem to relax. Try as I might to forget, the words Sid and Lalita wrote each other keep popping up in my head.

Even though I don’t like it, it’s pretty obvious to me that Sid and Lalita were made for each other. Every time I think about all they shared together, I ask myself the same question—why did Sid marry me in the first place?

I still remember the day Sid first came to ‘see’ me—I’d already been rejected by three other prospective grooms. Sid too could have refused to marry me then.

Papa had been so confused when the first boy’s family politely ‘regretted’ the alliance.

‘Respected Mr Ahuja, your daughter will make someone a good wife; however, we regret to inform we are not interested.’

From then on everything about my marriage or even the prospect of my marriage was fraught with disappointments. With every unanswered matrimonial advertisement, my parents’ apprehensions grew. Ma was silently accepting but resiliently hopeful. Papa declared there was something wrong with the boys if they were refusing me—couldn’t they see I was a gem?

Naani was the only one who wasn’t surprised by the refusals or hopeful about an alliance. I’m told she’d predicted marital doom for me, right from the moment I was born.

‘Hai Ram, it’s as if all the darkness of the night sky has gathered together on her face. You better start rubbing besan on her face, Uma, or you’ll have a hard time finding a groom for this girl. No one wants a dark bride, no one will want to marry her,’ Naani said as she first gazed upon a newborn me.

Since then she had constantly told off Ma for not doing anything about my complexion. Once I was grown-up enough to understand—I was seven—she took to constantly telling me off about my dark skin.

It didn’t matter that I was healthy—‘She’s kind of plain, no?’—or that I did well at school and was a very obedient child. For Naani, it all started and ended with my ‘dark’ skin—the right and wrong colours to wear, oily food I shouldn’t eat, beauty therapies I should try and even gods I should pray to in the hope that one morning … one morning I’d wake up and be the fairest of them all.