You see, when Jay Dhillon walked into my life, I was labouring under that omnipresent delusion of youth, convinced the world was mine for the taking.

With the discovery of purpose, I realized the loss of my freedom. But this was before that bothered me. It was before I learned that nothing is ever what it seems, and that our lies are just dressed up versions of hopeful truths—they are dreams.

Besides, it was one of those things that happened because it had to. The universe had built me in such a way that had Jay and I met inside fading bodies, closer to ash than flesh, at eighty-three, I could not have but lost myself to him just as instantly, just as irrevocably. And I suppose that is what made the whole matter so terribly sad. The inevitability of it, you know; discarded time and irrelevant space.

This was always going to happen.

Caroline’s Ship

25 December 2007

It was a grand party, unfolding, as all grand parties do, in a full swing of champagne, ribbons, livery and politics.

Devika Das was getting married. But that means nothing, of course. It was Debi Mullick’s eldest granddaughter getting married.

Debi Mullick had been Chief Minister of West Bengal for thirty-four years now. In that time, he had established an authoritarian rule, while cloaked in the genteel figure of a soft-spoken barrister. The state had slowly crumbled; dust from what remained of business and industry mingled with the ashes of bureaucracy, even as people took to the streets waving loyal red flags. And through it all, Debi Mullick had sat upon a simple throne, gilded only ever so slightly, a sombre expression upon his pleasant face.

I was there because Devika’s younger sister, Simi, and I had been close since second grade. We had been assigned seats next to each other in fourth-period maths, which we had both failed. She had light-brown gossamer hair, a rosebud mouth set against very fair skin and constantly fiddled with a plain silver band on her right index finger.

Simi was very pretty, and because I was ugly as sin, I had to be her friend.

Her name is an anomaly: Simone Das. On paper she sounds like she speaks a little bit of Bangla with a pronounced Parisian accent. In reality, she speaks flawless Bangla and not a word of French. No one knows why her earthy, staunchly Bengali parents gave her this floaty, foreign name. I like to think it was a moment of whimsy, a shy hand grasped by a tentative paw one week before an arranged marriage. Maybe a character in some book they had both read times over (because when two people—even strangers—discover a book they both have loved, it feels like a shared secret).