I didn’t know what to do next. Everyone I knew was working towards something, some sort of goal—a job, a better job, marriage, kids, something. And I, unable to commit anywhere, unable to belong to anything, stood immobile, rooted to indecision.

It occurred to me that I was my only claimant. I belonged only to myself, to the things that bound me into consciousness. The rest was just noise.

Jay had been my only constancy, the shape of that love the only immortal thing within me. And I had poured all of it into Frequencies over the past four years. I had kept myself preoccupied for these past few months after coming back to India for good and moved to Jay’s city, meeting publishers and working on turning my leaden pile of prose into something they would put on store shelves.

But it was done now. The book was out, the reviews had said what they had to say, and I supposed the most emotionally profitable thing to do was to chalk the damn thing down to some sort of success.

I was living alone for the first time, in a large, airy apartment that belonged to a distant aunt, and did a good job of keeping up the deception of independence. Not that I really cared. My brother had started school in California, and Button and Cookie were both interning across Europe, so it wasn’t like I had anywhere to go, nor had I, in my protected, bubble-bound school years, made any unsavoury friends whom I could now bring back home. India was stifling, infected with an incredible social striation that turned cities teeming with millions into villages. There was nothing I could do without having to consider a hundred variables first, mentally tracing routes back and forth, walking in and out of Zara when I really just wanted to slide into a bar.

In desperate times, the couple of cousins I had in the city were my desperate measure. One of them was getting married. It appeared to be their news of the century.

Resolved to be a good sport, I volunteered to accompany Nitwit on a fitting for her bridal lehenga, a dazzling spectacle that could, in the event of a power failure, light up the wedding venue as an added benefit.

In the car, en route to the fitting, she talked small to me. ‘How was America, Taru baby?’

You wouldn’t understand the half of it. ‘Good.’

‘You were there for so long, na? What were you doing?’ Earning a degree and smoking pot. ‘Getting a degree.’

‘Did you have to study a lot and all?’

No. I’m smart. ‘Yeah, a little. It’s not that bad.’

Nits threw open long eyelashes. ‘But it must be hard, na?’

I shrugged, suddenly angry, wanting to spit spite, to tell her that this, this trying to talk to her doe eyes and dull brain, was much, much harder.

‘Did you do Honours?’