‘When did he get divorced?’

  ‘Five years ago. He was married for just a year. And yet . . .’

  He shakes his head. ‘You might bring them the most perfect person to ever exist, but if your parents don’t want you to find love on your own, they will always find something to point out.’

  Now, I get it.

  ‘Yours is going to be a love marriage, too?’ I ask him.

  He nods.

  ‘And your parents don’t like her?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t care any more,’ he answers.

  ‘What? You have moved out?’ I squeal, noticing the similarity, but I see his frown now. ‘I mean, of course, that’s sad but you’ve got to admit that’s some coincidence, right?’

  He’s about to speak but suddenly light flashes around us, followed by the loud crash of thunder, and the electricity is knocked out for a second.

  ‘That was . . .’

  The arrivals board blinks to life. It runs through the initial screens and the flight details slowly fill up. I scan to look for Aman’s.

  LKO-DEL – Flight diverted.

  3

  Raghav

  It’s been ten minutes of rain and the road outside is already flooded. Every time we make something shiny, we expect it to work and then it doesn’t, and we fault ourselves for being hopeful. ‘I can’t believe this is after ten minutes of rain,’ says Aditi.

  ‘I mean, in defence of the corrupt contractors who must have designed this apparently state-of-the-art airport,’ I point at the hailstones banging against the glass walls, ‘it’s end-of-days kind of rain. The traffic must be crazy.’

  ‘Rain’s just an inconvenience when you are a grown-up,’ she says.

  We watch the guys manning the parking stations wading towards the terminals, knee deep in water. The hordes of relatives who were waiting outside have retreated into the parking lot and have found higher ground. The visitors’ area is now packed, and they have stopped selling tickets. Like us, everyone complained about the shoddy infrastructure, but now everyone has quietened down. That’s the beauty of the people of this country: we accept our misery so easily that it keeps getting dished out.

  The arrivals board flips again. LKO-DEL. Diverted. JAI.

  ‘Now what?’ asks Aditi.

  I shrug. ‘Could be anything. The airline people do anything. Maybe they will make them wait on the tarmac there, or maybe they will fly out tomorrow morning. Who knows?’

  Aditi’s eyes are stuck on the rain pattering heavily against the wall.

  ‘Hey? You okay?’

  She nods, but it’s clear she’s not. I know if I ask her once more, she will be a pool of tears. At times like these, I ask myself what would Megha do in a situation like this, and this is one of them.

  So I ask her again, ‘You okay?’

  She looks at me, her eyes suddenly pools of tears and says, ‘I’m not okay. He should have been here. He’s not being fair.’

  I have a feeling she’s doing what I was doing, misplacing her frustration. My mind wanders to the letter she wrote to her family. What tone did she choose? Disappointment? Anger? Extreme sadness?

  ‘I mean, yes, but it’s not really in his hands,’ I tell her. ‘It’s the weather.’

  ‘I don’t care if it’s in his hands or not,’ she says, wiping her tears on the back of her T-shirt sleeve. ‘He always does this.’

  ‘He’s not the god of thunder.’

  ‘Why won’t you let me complain?’ she says. ‘It’s between him and me. It’s our love language. I complain, he explains.’

  ‘Sure,’ I say, and I’m thrown back to what our love language is. Apart from other things, it’s to not complain. She never complained on days when I worked nights on end trying to make data look better so my company could pick up more funding.

  ‘Why are you boys like this?’ she says, sniffles and wipes more tears on her sleeve.

  I continue, ‘Megha’s logical too. In fact, she’s more logical than I am.’

  ‘Where’s the fun in that?’ she says. ‘When do you think they will land in Jaipur?’

  I check the time. ‘Another fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Do you think they will not fly today?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I think,’ I tell her and shrug.

  The waiting hall’s now filling up, lines are forming in front of Costa Coffee, Vaango and other outlets. The forgotten patties and the soggy fruitcakes are finally getting the attention they never deserved. Watching the girl texting again makes me open Megha’s chat too. I click a picture of the crowd near me and send it to her with a text.

  Me

  Out of all these people, I’m the luckiest one.

  It doesn’t reach her, of course. Instead, her last texts stare back at me.

  Megha

  We are not making a mistake?

  Megha

  Sorry.

  Megha

  I meant, we are not making a mistake.

  It’s one of the few times that Megha made a typo. If I were into signs the universe sends out, I would have freaked out.

  I had replied lamely, No, we are not.

  I’m about to put the phone back into my pocket when a single tick appears, and then a double tick. I hear Aditi.

  ‘They have landed!’

  Before I can turn and nod, she’s already on the phone, walking away from me. As if on cue, my phone rings. It’s Megha.

  ‘Hello? Megha? Baby?’

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘They took you to Jaipur?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Megha. ‘It was so scary, Raghav. The entire aircraft was wobbling. It’s fine here, though. You’re still at the airport?’

  ‘Where else would I be? Are they telling you when you will fly again?’

  ‘No, no. People are shouting at the flight attendants, but what will they say? They also don’t know, na,’ she says.

  ‘So, are you deplaning or not?’

  ‘No clue,’ she says. ‘Wait, wait, they are making some announcement.’

  I try to strain and listen, but I can’t make out what the captain is saying in a typical holding-the-microphone-too-close-to-their-mouth voice.

  ‘Why can’t they speak normally?’ I say.

  ‘Shh.’

  The announcement goes on for another excruciating minute.

  ‘What did they—’

  ‘They are making us deplane. They will try to take us to Delhi in the morning. It will be a 5 a.m. flight, they are saying.’

  ‘Morning? They will make you wait at the airport all night?’

  ‘Wait, wait. I will deplane and talk to you.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too.’

  ‘I thought I would be with you by now, baby,’ she says. ‘Soon.’

  ‘Soon.’

  Click.

  I look at the clock. 7 p.m. By now, even with all the delays, Megha and I should have been sitting in a cab, her fingers intertwined with mine, and on our way to the apartment—our first apartment. And yet, here I am, in the midst of hundreds of sweaty bodies, grumbling and on the phone.

  She’s 300 kilometres away. Distance makes the heart go irritated.

  Outside, the rain has eased up a little. I check the app and it’s showing a few cabs ten, and fifteen, and twenty minutes away. I just can’t bring myself to book a cab for home. Is it really home till the time she moves in? Places her mugs on the shelves? Fixes the photo frame? Decides what curtains we want to put up? Without her, it’s just walls and fading paint.

  ‘It was nice meeting you.’

  I turn to see Aditi standing behind me.

  ‘Umm . . . same,’ I say.

  ‘I will see you tomorrow morning, then?’ she says with a smile. ‘Did you find a cab?’

  ‘Ten minutes away,’ I say.

  ‘Awesome. See you then?’

  I nod as she turns away from me. I glance back at my app, and once again, I can’t book a cab. I should just stay here; what’s a few hours? Back home, the wait begins again. Here, at least I will be at the cusp of something new. Back home, I will be thinking about the family again. The thoughts are already creeping up on me. I close my eyes, take a deep breath and will myself that when I open them, I won’t think about them.

  It’s easier said than done. When I open my eyes, I watch the crowd steadily leaving the waiting area. And that’s when I see her. Aditi’s lugging her overstuffed backpack walking towards an empty seat. She sets her overflowing bag aside, a few clothes jutting out of it, and pulls a book out of it.

  Then, she retrieves her spectacles from her back pocket and puts them on, balancing them lightly on the bridge of her nose. I can’t tell if this is intentional or if her spectacles have become loose from mishandling.

  She’s going to stay here for the night. This bag is all she has. For a moment, my mind races back to the cupboards at my new apartment, and the packed suitcases with the shirts and trousers I had splurged on in the first months of my job despite Megha harping on for me to save.

  I don’t want to, but I have somewhere to go. But Aditi has nowhere to go.

  4

  Aditi

  ‘There’s no way I’m going to a hotel!’

  ‘Hey, jaan. Listen,’ Aman says, as he always does to get me to agree to whatever he feels is right, and more often than not, I have to agree. He’s seven years older on paper, but it’s only when he uses this tone—commanding, yet soft—that it feels like it.

  ‘Don’t jaan me. I’m not unnecessarily spending on a hotel room. We aren’t,’ I insist.

  ‘It’s just one day,’ he says, his voice patient.

  ‘And I’m not becoming a burden on Day One, okay? The waiting room is comfortable, don’t worry about it. I’m not an oldie like you.’

  ‘Jaan,’ he repeats, a warning note in his voice. ‘You’re not a burd—’

  ‘No,’ I insist now. ‘I won’t. You keep saying it, but I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.’

  ‘Should I also stay at the airport then?’ he asks, his tone dropping a little.

  ‘Yours is free, Aman! If mine were free, I would have ordered room service ALL THE TIME!’

  ‘Room service is not included,’ he says. ‘Listen to me. What will you do there the entire night? Look, my money is your money—’

  ‘I’ll read my book, sleep a little. And anyway, you’re landing at six. I’ll have to leave the hotel at four. It’s not like I’ll get any sleep,’ I urge him. ‘And I’ve made a friend who’s staying here the night, so I’m sorted.’

  ‘A friend?’ he says with mock jealousy. He’s the not the possessive kind. He’s the exact opposite. He jokes that once you’ve had a long-term relationship go bust, you know it’s seldom someone outside the relationship. It’s you. In the past one and half years that we have been together, he has mentioned his failed relationship thrice—which is not a lot, I know—but I would have liked it to be zero times. I’m the possessive kind.

  ‘He was waiting for the same flight,’ I explain. ‘And guess what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘His fiancée is travelling too on the same flight!’

  ‘Okay?’ he says, plainly. ‘Is that really a big coincidence?’

  ‘There’s something else too,’ I say and drop my voice to a whisper. ‘Though that’s a sad bit. Their situation . . . it’s a bit like ours.’

  ‘Like ours?’

  ‘Their parents didn’t agree to their relationship. They are also running away.’

  Aman drops his voice and says, a little softer, ‘We are not running away. We are walking away. There’s a difference. We don’t need to be guilty about what we are doing here.’

  I nod. ‘You’re right. They are also walking away.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Yeah, that I would say is quite a coincidence.’

  ‘Her name’s Megha,’ I tell him. ‘Go say hi if you find her.’

  ‘There are 250 people on the flight,’ he says with a laugh. ‘I doubt I will find her. Achcha listen, they are just telling us where to catch the shuttle. I will call you in a bit.’

  Click.

  When I look up, I find Raghav buying himself a book from the bookstore. It’s a productivity book, The Best You, that touts to change the reader’s life and make them reach their absolute potential. I have been through the phase too. However, unlike the others, I was drowning in assignments while many coasted and I started to believe there was something wrong with me. Having paid, he stands there, completely absorbed, running a hand through his short, well-managed hair. He has a nice face. Not handsome in the easy, bright way Aman’s is. Aman is in his final form—handsome, built well, but Raghav’s still . . . a work in progress. You can still see a boy in him. His tan is uneven, a tell-tale that he must be spending a lot of time outdoors, and it kind of suits him. He’s wearing a simple, dark-grey linen shirt. Looks expensive. And so do his dark trousers that he’s wearing over Nike minimal sneakers. I wonder what his salary is. Should I Google Glassdoor and find out? That would be too weird. I slip into these patterns every now and then every time my own employment smacks me in the face.

  ‘Have you read this?’ he asks when he catches me staring at his book.

  I nod.

  ‘Did it help?’ he asks.

  ‘For a day, and then I resorted to my old habits. So, I’m guessing I will never reach my potential. The best me,’ I say.

  ‘There are some other books too that I can recommend,’ he says. ‘There’s one by—’

  ‘I’m beginning to think there’s no compelling reason to find out what the best, most productive version of me will be like,’ I say and point to the cover of the book. ‘If I were a world-changing genius, I would have known by now.’ He doesn’t say it, but I know what he’s thinking, so I say, ‘You think that’s giving up, right?’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ he says. ‘By the way, Megha says the same thing. That we are trying too hard to be perfect and then one day AI or something will replace us.’

  ‘Will it?’ I say, and before he can respond, I tell him, ‘By the way, I told Aman about Megha and you. They are getting shifted to a hotel now.’

  And that’s when my phone rings. It’s Aman on a video call. He usually never video-calls.

  ‘Hello?’ I say.

  ‘Hey. Is he . . .’ And then Aman turns to the side. I hear a girl’s voice, assertive and smooth, like a radio host’s, say, ‘Raghav.’ And then Aman says, ‘Is Raghav around?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, confused.

  Raghav hears his name and gives me the same confused look that I give him.

  And then, Aman turns the camera towards a girl who waves at me. She’s not really a girl, a proper woman. Her face structure is perfect? I don’t see why Raghav’s parents . . . but then I see what it is. Suddenly, I feel intensely sad about Raghav. A man smitten by who Megha is, beyond what I can see—her beauty, but I can’t imagine that how she looks didn’t play a huge part in his love for her, and yet it’s the reason why they have had to run away. She’s sitting down, and I can only see her face, weaving in and out of frame, but she feels like she’s tall. Like, really tall. And beautiful, like proper beautiful.

  ‘Hi guys,’ the girl says, her voice as smooth as I imagined.

  Raghav now steps closer and looks into the camera. ‘Hi?’ Was he blushing?

  ‘They were calling out names for the bus,’ explains Aman. ‘And she was right in front of me.’

  ‘Today’s a day of coincidences!’ I squeal, but none of them share my excitement.

  ‘By the way, both of you are crazy that you’re staying at the airport,’ says Megha. ‘Raghav, go home, and Aditi, please, you too.’

  ‘Can we not discuss this?’ says Raghav, his voice firm. ‘I’m here.’

  ‘See?’ I say. ‘Don’t worry about us.’

  ‘Listen, guys,’ says Raghav. ‘We’ll be okay here. It’s just a few hours.’

  ‘How’s it okay?’ says Megha. If someone with the quiet ferocity of Megha had told me to go, I would have gone.

  But Raghav doesn’t move an inch and says, ‘Of course not, Megha.’

  ‘You’re not going to do it,’ says Megha, her voice full of certainty.

  ‘Of course not,’ I say, crossing my arms.

  ‘Fine,’ says Megha, letting out a small, defeated sigh.

  ‘Okay, guys,’ says Aman. ‘We are here, I’m cutting the call. Nice meeting you, Raghav. See you in Delhi? Aditi, I will call you in a bit.’

  ‘Bye,’ says Megha.

  The call ends abruptly.

  I look at Raghav. ‘Megha’s hot.’

  ‘Amongst other things, yes,’ he says, unable to hide a proud smile.

  ‘How did you like Aman?’ I ask.

  ‘He has nice teeth,’ Raghav says, looking right at me.

  It makes me crack up and think maybe the night’s not that long too.

  5

  Raghav

  ‘I will call you at four to wake you up.’

  ‘Don’t stress, Raghav. I will tell the reception people to call me,’ says Megha. ‘Get some sleep.’

  ‘You think I will be able to sleep?’ I ask her. ‘And I had a lot of coffee. And this girl here, she talks quite a bit.’

  ‘So does her boyfriend,’ she says. ‘He talked all the way to the hotel room. I think I might know him better than I know you. They are cute though.’

  ‘Cuter than us?’

  Every therapy app, self-help bot, Claude and Gemini keep telling me that I shouldn’t ask her these questions too often. It reeks of insecurity, but at this point it’s a reflex. I keep wondering if all of this is a dream and one day Megha’s going to wake up, realize I’m not worthy of her and walk out.

  ‘We are not cute,’ she grumbles. ‘We are hot. Hot people remain hot in their sixties and seventies while cute’s shelf life is just till the forties. Don’t call me cute again.’

  ‘By the way, that’s what she said too,’ I say. ‘That you’re hot.’

  ‘I like her better now,’ says Megha and laughs.

  The laugh that fooled me into believing she was in love with me right on the first date. My heart broke a little when I saw she laughs like that at other people too. Now she puts on a stern tone and says, ‘Just put your head down and try to sleep a bit. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.’