Omkar stared at the glorified painting of Guru Nanak on the wall. The look on his face and the way he had his hand lifted in the painting always made Omkar feel like he was messing up. Neeraj had aspired to fashion himself after Nanak’s virtue. As a result, Nanak always reminded Omkar less of a guru and more of his own father.

Though Omkar wore a thin version of the traditional kara bracelet, he had chosen when he was very young to shave, cut his hair and abandon the traditional Sikh costume. Sometimes, this made him feel guilty. Neeraj and Jarminder still felt invalidated in their lives and beliefs by his decision. They wanted Omkar to be proud of his faith and most of all proud of the culture that had forged the marrow in his bones. But they also knew that faith could not be forced upon their son. They knew that the tighter they held him, the more he would rebel, and they were afraid that rebellion might just lead him to reject their culture entirely. And so, there was a tension in the house that was never directly addressed. You could only feel it sometimes in sideways comments and in the emotional distance between them.

Neeraj sat down on the couch beside Jarminder. The companionship of his wife could only be accessed at times like this by joining her in her fixation on the screen. He asked her for an update on the plot line. Irritated at the possibility of missing something, she caught him up in a fast and exasperated tone before settling into the pleasure of having someone to experience the rollercoaster of intrigue with her.

Omkar, who had only come upstairs for a drink during his shift watching over the family shop, sidled back down the stairs. The store seemed emptier than ever. He stood behind the checkout counter staring at the products, whose packaging advertised only to the emptiness in the room. It felt like a waste of life doing what every good Indian boy should do with the family business. “How much more of a cliché could I be?” he wondered. But he didn’t want to hurt his parents any more than they had been hurt already. Omkar hadn’t yet carved out his own life because of the fact that he would have to leave his parents’ lives to do it. He couldn’t face the severity of the shame inherent in doing so. He couldn’t choose to betray them by becoming one more thing that they had put all their energy into, only to lose.