Abi
When your grandma tells you at age six that you're going to marry your cousin, it doesn't sound weird. It sounds like a royal prophecy. The kind of announcement that echoes in your tiny brain while you're munching on a mango popsicle with sticky hands.
You don't question it. You accept it. Because grandmas are the original fortune tellers — they know who's going to top in board exams, who's going to elope, and who's going to bring shame to the family WhatsApp group. If Paati said I'd marry Abhananth, then surely the stars were aligned. Right?
Wrong. So, so wrong.
Let me rewind. I'm Abi. Short. Curvy. The kind of curvy that gets you told you have a 'good personality' at weddings. I exist somewhere in the venn diagram between being seen as adorable and being entirely invisible to the male species.
Except one boy. My cousin. Abhananth.
I know. Sounds scandalous. But it didn't feel that way. He was the boy who made me feel noticed without trying. Who once told me he liked the way I said the word "mosquito" with a village accent. The boy who used to draw Dora the Explorer just for me every summer.
And I've been in love with him since before I knew what love meant.
He never really noticed me. Not like that. And why would he? He was tall, dusky, lean, and had the kind of eyes that made you want to agree to anything he said. Even if he was suggesting a diet plan.
He barely spoke to me now. Not out of cruelty — but because life happens. School. College. Distance. Muscat.
Still, every time I saw him, my heart did that stupid somersault it's been doing since I was 8 years old. And yet, I remained frozen. Silent. The girl who loved too quietly.
I don't know when exactly I started counting moments instead of memories. Like that time he passed me the last piece of Mysore pak at Thatha's 70th birthday. Or when he absentmindedly ruffled my hair during Ayudha Pooja like I was a golden retriever.
But to me, those were nothings that meant everything.
I wasn't delusional. I knew what we were — relatives. Not the fairytale kind, not the steamy kind, just — relatives. But when you grow up lonely, you cling to any place that feels like a home. And to me, he felt like that.
There was only one person in the whole wide family who I could talk to without filtering my voice: Arya. His sister. My best friend. If my life was a sari, Arya was the pallu that kept me together.
And she never knew I liked her brother. Which is probably for the best. Because even I hated how cliché it sounded. The girl next door (literally), pining for a boy who'd probably forgotten she even existed outside of Pongal get-togethers.
But it's not that he was rude or indifferent. He was kind in the casual way that broke me. Like smiling at your joke without really hearing it. Like asking, "How is your college?" and "How are your friends?" and never, "What's making you happy these days?"
Maybe I was greedy. Maybe I expected him to remember things I never let him know mattered.
Like how I saved every Dora drawing he gave me. Each one creased with time and folded like a love letter I was too scared to write.
I kept them in a tin box under my bed. I called it the 'Just-In-Case' box. Just in case he ever asked why I looked at him like he hung the stars in the sky. Just in case he remembered.
He never did.
But that was okay.
Because soon, I'd be leaving. For an internship in Pune. A whole new city. New people. Maybe even a new version of me — one that didn't stare wistfully at wedding mandap photos.
I told Arya I was excited. She told me to bring back souvenirs. I told Amma I was nervous. She said, "Go become a lioness."
Amma always had a flair for the dramatic.
And just like that, I packed my life into two suitcases, one lunch bag, and a million what-ifs. What if I met someone new? What if I actually got over him?
What if… this was the last time I ever saw him the same way?