Veer Malhotra had not been oblivious for a single day in five years.
He wanted to be very clear about this — at least in the privacy of his own head, where clarity was allowed and cost nothing. He was not oblivious. He had never been oblivious. Oblivious would have been easier.
He was sitting in his office — the small one on the ground floor that he'd claimed as his own when the rest of the family had started using the main office for wedding-related coordination and he'd needed somewhere quiet — with a set of files open in front of him that he was not reading. The house sounds moved around him: somewhere above, Anaya and Meera were probably on the terrace, which they were every evening they were both here, which had been true for five years and which Veer had learned to not think about too directly.
He thought about it anyway.
Five years. The first time Anaya had brought Meera Kapoor home — a Thursday afternoon in their second year of college, introduced as 'my best friend, she's wonderful, she won a goldfish and doesn't know what to do with it' — Veer had been in the kitchen, and he'd thought: alright. Anaya's friend. Good. And he'd made tea and been polite and that had been that.
Except it hadn't been that, because three weeks later she'd been back, and three weeks after that again, and there was a version of this story where Veer could have remained in the category of 'Anaya's sister's older brother, present but peripheral.' He'd tried for that version. He'd been quite committed to it for the first six months.
And then there'd been the college festival.
— ✦ —
He'd been running late — not badly, but later than he'd planned, and his car had decided to express its feelings about this by developing a fault near the campus gate. He'd called Anaya, who'd arrived with Meera in tow, and the intention had been: get the car sorted, get his sister, leave.
The car took longer than expected to sort. By the time it was resolved, Anaya had disappeared into the crowd and Meera was standing with a goldfish in a bag, looking at him with a directness that he found immediately disarming. Most people didn't look at him that directly. He didn't have the kind of face that invited sustained eye contact from people who didn't know him.
She'd offered to show him around while they waited.
He'd said alright. He didn't know why. He was not someone who said alright to things without a clear reason; he generally had reasons for everything. He didn't have one for this. He followed her through the courtyard and she pointed things out and made observations and asked him things — not the careful social questions people usually asked him, but actual questions, like she was interested in the answers and not in the impression the asking would create.
He found the goldfish a home. She laughed. And then she looked at him — briefly, while she was still laughing, the laugh fading into something that was just the expression left behind after a laugh, open and unguarded — and Veer thought, with the quiet alarm of someone stepping on a road and discovering it is not where they thought it was: oh.
Oh, that's the problem.
He'd driven home that evening thinking about it with the systematic thoroughness he applied to actual problems: she was Anaya's best friend. She was twenty-one and studying literature and she laughed easily and asked real questions and she looked at the world with this particular quality of attention that was not naive but was also not cynical, and she was — she was—
He'd stopped thinking in that direction.
He'd made a decision.
— ✦ —
The decision was not complicated. The Malhotra family was what it was — the wealth, the old loyalties, the operations that ran in the background of the respectable surface. Veer had grown up knowing what the family was, had spent his teenage years — the ones after the orphanage, the ones in this haveli — learning how to be part of it without being consumed by it. He ran the legitimate operations. He kept himself at a careful distance from the parts that were not legitimate. He was not naive about what the family name carried.
Meera Kapoor came from a normal family. She was studying literature because she loved stories. She stress-baked, according to Anaya, and she made friends with a directness that was entirely without agenda, and she loved things — music, books, food, people — with an enthusiasm that was completely unperformative.
She deserved someone who could offer her a clean life.
He was not that.
He'd made the decision and he'd kept it for five years with the particular stubbornness that was his main character flaw and his primary survival mechanism in equal measure. He'd been at every family gathering she'd attended. He'd watched her become part of his family in the most natural, inevitable way. He'd watched Baba look at her with that warm, assessing look he gave people he'd decided to love. He'd watched his mother cry over her twice that he knew of and probably more times he didn't.
He'd kept his distance. He'd been consistent about it. He'd been thorough.
And then six months ago the families had sat down and the match had been discussed and Veer had listened to the proposal and thought: she will have a good life. The family will take care of her. She will be Anaya's sister properly. She will have everything she needs.
He had not thought: I will have everything I want.
He hadn't let himself think that.
He was trying not to think it now, sitting in his office with the files he wasn't reading, listening to the haveli settle around him and knowing that two floors above him she was on the terrace with his sister and he was down here making very deliberate choices about where he directed his attention.
He heard her laugh from somewhere — distant, muffled by floors and walls, but unmistakable. Her laugh was specific. He'd known it for five years and it hadn't gotten less specific.
He looked at the files.
Ten days, he told himself. After the wedding, she will be family and the category will be clear and the decision will make itself. She will be his sister's sister. She will be Baba's daughter. She will be exactly where she should be.
He will stop. He had a plan. He would keep it.
He went back to the files.
He did not, for a long time, manage to read them.