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Andaleeb Wajid

MIRROR, MIRROR

1

I thought my seventeenth birthday was going to be like any other. Boy, was I wrong.

My phone started beeping with birthday notifications from the moment it struck midnight, but I slept through it all. I even allowed myself to skip yoga in the morning and stay in bed for ten minutes longer than I usually did.

I glanced at my phone and saw that I had missed calls from my best friends, Nisha and Anirudh. We had holidays for Dasara in college, and had decided to meet at a cafe for lunch.

My parents had been subdued since morning. We had planned to go out for dinner, just the three of us. I should have known something was up when Papa agreed to my choice of the restaurant. He hated The Green Revolution. He insisted that grass is for cows and pooh-poohed my food choices all the time. But even that didn’t tip me off.

During lunch with Nisha and Anirudh at the cafe, things were a bit weird and, at first, I couldn’t figure out why. I observed the two of them and realized that they were not behaving as usual.

Anirudh looked troubled and Nisha seemed miserable. I suddenly realized what had happened. There was something going on between the two of them—something to do with their feelings for each other. Either Anirudh had said something to Nisha, or the other way around and it had made things awkward between them.

I tried and tried to get it out of them but they wouldn’t tell me. They said that we’ll talk the next day, after my birthday. I even blurted out what I was starting to suspect and going by Anirudh’s blanched face, I knew I was on to something. Nisha just looked away, shaking her head.

The birthday just went downhill from there. I needed to speak to Nisha alone, but that made me feel guilty too.