‘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 forAman’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 ofthem.
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 tonotcomplain. 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.
