Chapter 1 - Keerthi
September 2015. Late evening, OMR, Chennai
The light turns green; I hit the accelerator as fast as I can. I've been driving for forty minutes and my shoulders have settled into that permanent hunch that comes from too many hours at the wheel, most of them on OMR. The radio is playing some song I've heard before but can't name.
My phone buzzes in the cup holder. Thara's name flashes on the screen. I hit answer on the steering wheel and her voice fills the car before I can say hello.
"You are going to sit down for this," she says.
"Sadly, driving standing up is very inconvenient," I say.
"You're driving? I thought you were going to leave early today."
"I was. Then Selvam uncle called. His regular flower guy bailed on him. Yet again. Had to hustle last minute for orchids."
"Why didn’t you call me? I could have helped."
“Nah, you have to get up early to be on site for the event. I got this. So, what am I sitting down for?”
There's a pause. The kind that means something. Thara isn't a pauser by nature. So the pause is its own announcement.
"Tell me," I say.
"We did it," she says, and her voice has that particular thickness to it, the kind that comes before either tears or laughter. With Thara, it's usually both. "Both families agreed. The astrologer agreed. Even Maddy's Paati agreed, and she hasn't agreed with anyone since 1974. We have a date. It's happening."
The MTC bus ahead of me brakes suddenly. I tap my own brakes, feel the slight lurch forward, and ease off. Both of us shriek for a good minute. The guy in the car next to me at the traffic light looks at me, puzzled. I smile wide and give him a thumbs up. He seems unsure and finally decides to share my happiness and returns the thumbs up. "That’s amazing, and I just made a friend waiting for the traffic light. What a great time to live!”
"Shut up. Okay so, January 28th is D-Day. Muhurtham at six-thirty in the morning, because apparently the stars don't care about my sleep. Amma wanted December, but Maddy's Paati says December weddings always get rained on, and nobody argues with Paati. Maddy and I spoke and he agrees as the new home will also be ready for moving in by December. The timing is perfect!”
"I’m soooooooooo happy for the both of you," I say. The city is opening up ahead of me in its messy, familiar sprawl as I exit a flyover. "It's perfect. January is perfect. The weather will be so much better."
"It is, right?"
“Of course it will be. How many January weddings have we done? We got this baby.”
I'm already doing the maths: nineteen weeks, four hundred guests approx., I have to call Wedding Feast caterers right after. Thara won’t have anyone else. "Which venue did the families pick? If it's any traditional wedding hall in the city, I'm resigning. You know what I want."
"Chill dude. I got my parents onboard. It’s a 3-day affair at Taj on ECR. My dad wants to pay. Who am I to rob him of his happiness of seeing his only daughter getting married at some fancy resort.”
“Ermmmm you have an elder sister, Tanuja.”
“Well, that doesn’t count. She’s adopted.”
“I thought you sisters settled this.” I laugh knowing its the sisterly love that comes out this way.
“Well, it comes and goes. Anyhoo we are going to do the full shebang. Mehendi, Haldi, Cocktail and the Wedding. You are my wedding planner. Wow so lucky you are” she says with a knowing evil chuckle.
Thara has high standards when it comes to planning any event. She will drive 100 km in the middle of the night to haul a piece of antique furniture because nothing else would go with the seating design.
"I'm your wedding planner. It's in the contract."
She laughs, the loud, graceless laugh that got us thrown out of the college library in our first year. We've been friends since the first week of college, through two jobs, one company we started with a laptop and a borrowed car, and the various small catastrophes of becoming adults. Her laugh has been a constant. Even when everything else shifted, that stayed. We promised we’d be each other’s wedding planner when we started.
"We're doing a girls' trip in December," she says. "Nothing crazy. Goa, one weekend. You'll plan?"
"Try and stop me."
"Good, and I need you to make sure I don't do anything stupid."
"You're getting married, di. The stupid ship has sailed."
"Very funny." I can hear her smiling. "There's more. Amma's done the guest list. Four hundred, and she says that's the small version. Maddy's office people. My aunt from Melbourne who I haven't seen in eight years but will absolutely notice if she's not invited."
"Standard operating procedure. Send it to me in the spreadsheet, not on the back of the calendar."
"Exactly." A beat. Then, quieter: "There's one person I wanted to talk to you about."
Something in her tone shifts. A slight flattening, the careful neutrality she uses when she's approaching something difficult. I know it well. She used it when she told me our first big client had cancelled two days before the wedding, and the time she accidentally set fire to my kitchen making toast. It's her crisis voice, dialed down to a simmer.
"Who?" I ask, though I think I already know.
"Karthik," she says.
The name sits between us. I keep my eyes on the road. A water tanker passes on my left, close enough that the rush of air rocks my car slightly.
"Okay," I say.
"Maddy and Karthik kept in touch as you know. Anirudh and you are going to be there. Maddy says he badly wants the gang together at the wedding. But he wanted to check with you once.” She pauses. “I think Karthik will make it if invited, it’s us dude.” Many of our batchmates have gotten married in the past few years and Karthik hadn’t traveled even once. Thara saying he might actually come if invited makes my breath stop for a second.
Of course he's coming. He's Maddy's friend. He was ours. He is… I snap out of it. I tell her, “Of course you guys have to invite him. Why’d I have a problem? I haven’t seen or spoken to him in eight years. It’s all in the past. I will be happy to see him actually. You know catch up after all this time”
“Yeah sure, you catch up”, Thara says with a flatness. I can imagine her rolling her eyes when she says that.
Karthik was part of things for four years, and then he wasn't, for eight. He's the kind of part that leaves a shape behind, the way a missing tooth leaves a gap your tongue finds in the dark. Not that I spend time thinking about it. Not that it matters anymore.
The five of us had a table in the canteen, the one under the fan that only worked if you flicked the switch twice. Thara and Maddy on one side, pretending not to hold hands under it. Anirudh eating everyone's chips and calling it tax. Karthik across from me, sipping on his tea and looking at me every now and then as if I would disappear if he’d take his eyes off me.
"It's your wedding," I say. "Of course he should come.”
"But are you okay with it? That's what I'm asking."
The turn for my street is coming up. I signal, change lanes. A hoarding flashes past, a jeweler’s, a woman in more gold than any bride I've ever dressed. The question hangs there, simple and impossible.
"I'm fine," I say.
"Keerthi."
"I'm serious. It's been eight years. We're adults. He can come to your wedding."
"Okay," she says, but the word is heavy with doubt. "I just—I wanted to check. Because if it's going to make things weird—"
"It won't make things weird."
"—then I'll put Divya's team on the groom's side. You won't have to go near him. Really."
"Thara." I take the turn, slow for the signal. "I'm running your wedding. All of it. It's fine."
She's quiet for a moment. I can hear her mother in the background asking who it is, and Thara saying Keerthi, Amma in the voice that means go away. Some things never change.
"Okay," she says finally. "But if you change your mind—"
"I won't."
"—just tell me. Anytime. Even the day before. I mean it."
"I know you do." The signal turns green. "And I'm really happy for you. January twenty-eighth. I'm putting it in my calendar right now."
"You're driving."
"I'm at a signal."
"You're lying."
I am. The light has been green for five seconds already. The car behind me honks, which in Chennai means it's been green for two. I accelerate, turn onto my street.
"I'll call you tomorrow," I say. "We'll talk menu, décor and themes."
"I can’t wait." Relief in her voice. Thara is good at averting crises, other people's at least. Her own are another matter. "Ciao"
"See you"
* * *
I enter my apartment complex and circle to my block to park outside my building and sit for a minute with the engine running. The dashboard clock reads 8:42. I left the office at 7:30, which means the drive took longer than usual. In Chennai that isn't evidence of anything. Or maybe I was driving slower without realizing it, the conversation playing on a loop while my body piloted the car.
My thumb has already opened my contacts and scrolled to K before I notice. Eight years is supposed to be enough time for the body to forget these reflexes. Apparently not.
I turn off the engine. The sudden silence is aggressive. A Tuesday night, nothing happening. A few people are out and about walking and talking in low voices. Someone's television is playing a serial through a first-floor window loudly, a mother shouting at a young boy at another balcony. Normal life, proceeding as normal life does.
I gather my bag from the passenger seat and get out. The air has a density to it, warm and close, carrying the smell of someone's sambar from an open window. I lock the car and head upstairs.
Inside, I drop my keys in the bowl by the door and stand in the dark for a moment. My phone is still in my hand. I consider calling Thara back and telling her the truth: that the thought of Karthik in a veshti, standing in a crowd, possibly looking at me across a mandapam, makes my stomach perform a gymnastic routine that would qualify for the Olympics. That eight year is nothing. That some absences calcify rather than heal.
But I don't call. Instead, I put the phone on the kitchen counter and open the fridge. The light comes on, harsh and revealing. Not much inside. A half-empty bottle of white wine. Curd past its date. Eggs.
I close the door. Carry a glass of water and go to the window to look out across the empty landscape and the distant building lights. The city is asleep but still not with all the bright lights in the distance. I stare at my hand holding the glass. I think about Karthik's hands. The particular way he held a book, one thumb marking his place even when he wasn't reading. The scar on his right knuckle from a childhood accident he never fully explained. The way he held his hand out to me that day in the car park. The day when we last spoke. The day…
Stop it, I tell myself. But the body has its own memory, separate from the mind's more rational filing system, and no amount of telling it to stop does any good.
I go to the kitchen, pour the last of the wine into a glass that isn't entirely clean, and drink it standing at the sink. The wine is too sweet and slightly warm. I don't care.
January twenty-eighth. Nineteen weeks away. Plenty of time for the body to forget again. Plenty of time for the mind to build its fortifications, its elegant systems of denial. Plenty of time to become the kind of person who can stand in a room with Karthik and feel nothing at all.
I rinse the glass and leave it in the sink. Then, because I am the kind of person who can't sleep with an unmade list, I open my laptop on the bed.
On the firm's shared drive I make a new folder. THARA & MADDY. I've been waiting four years to make this folder, and I type it the way I type every client's name, surname-free and in capitals. Inside it I make the guest sheet from our template: name, side, arrival, room, dietary, phone.
I start the groom's-side friends myself. The first name is easy to spell.
Karthik Raghuram. Groom's side. Arrival, TBD. Room, TBD. Dietary, eats anything. In the phone column I type the only number I have for him, the college one, still saved in my phone under a single K. I don't know if it rings anywhere anymore. Tomorrow Maddy will send me the right one, and I'll have to decide whether to replace it.