~ |Avanti| ~

In a fairer world, I would have gotten away. In a smarter world, the average vlogger would not have trespassed. In a kinder world, I would not be famous.

Famous? No, I'm sorry. I meant infamous.

"You spilled the paneer?" was the first question Neeti asked me, not even halfway through opening her front door.

I placed the giftbox of mellow yellow onesies on her coffee table. "Nishant spilled the paneer."

"And you yelled at him?"

"Yes."

"You called him a chutiya?"

"Yes, and don't pretend you disagree."

"You kicked the kadhai at him?" she pressed, ignoring my comment.

"I kicked the wok, yes, but wasn't aiming at him. Though that sounds like a good idea."

"I need to make some calls, pakad isse." Handing me her week-old baby, my boss and only work friend disappeared into her bedroom. With no choice but to cradle the newborn munchkin, I sunk back on her couch, which had already started carrying the faint smell of baby vomit.

For a first-class member of a newly minted batch of humans, Kamya looked awfully calm. She wasn't in the stage where babies are cute and chubby. Her cheeks were papery, almost a raw pink, and her wrinkled, hairless eyes twitched as she drooled in her sleep. I lightly tapped the crown of her head, feeling her barely solid skull. It was always surreal to hold a newborn, to realize they had no experiences, no skills, no periphery and no control on their senses. That a lifetime would not be enough for them to learn everything about life. It made me feel grand and inconsequential at the same time.

God, I want my own.

Neeti returned, dropping on the sofa next to me and not bothering to take Kamya back. I was her break till I left. "Your leave without pay is now with half-pay."

"But I'm still suspended?"

"You broke half the rules in the HR manual Avanti, be glad they didn't fire you."

"Saala Yatis ka khud ka pati bhagoda hai uspe nahi lagayegi woh HR rules," the hotel chain I worked for was not doing too well, and my own shares within it had tanked so hard it was almost depressing. "Iss desh mai salaried taxpayer ki hi bas mari hui hai."

"Kitna ghaata hua?"

"Almost seventy thousand."

That was cue for Neeti to offer me more of the gulab jamuns which had accumulated since her delivery. I chomped on two in four bites, still holding Kamya. "I'm glad I sold mine before the fiasco man," she said, "Never fucking with the stock market again. Mutual funds hi best hai."

"You sound like my dad."

She laughed, "Well I'm a parent now, have to start playing it safe." As if to prove her point, Kamya started wiggling in my lap, letting out a thin pitched wail. Neeti scooped her up, got her tit out and made her baby latch on to it to quieten her agitation. It worked. "Speaking of playing it safe, how's your groom hunting going? Found a husband yet?"

"No, but I got my sixth rejection. And now I feel like BiyahRachao.com has blacklisted me."

"Why?"

"Because I'm a modern day chudail out for the throat of any man who marries me." The entitled vlogger and his sleazy cameraman had been rewarded for their mistake. My meltdown was the most viral content on their platform. Despite him apologizing immediately and deleting his video from his account, I later learned that it had been a live.

Actual people, thousands, had watched me insult Nishant. Generally, we were allowed to show our rage in the kitchen. But Gaurav fucking Pandita recorded and immortalized my slip up, kicking HR, of all people, into action.

One week later, I was a popular GIF. And that was the kindest interpretation of me on the internet. Screengrabs from his live of me kicking the wok had made their way to popular pages, especially anti-feminist meme pages. #TakeTheRedPill to escape these #AngryFeminazis, they said. Three days ago, someone found my profile on BiyahRachao.com, circulated it, and warned their male community spaces to not bother considering me.

Gordon Ramsey was a millionaire. I was suspended and single for being a bitchy shrew.

Yesterday, when a thirty-year old divorcee walked out of our date, on account of him suddenly realizing why I looked "so familiar," my rage turned into defeat. I didn't even yell an insult at him. Something I now regret.

"Well it was his loss then," Neeti consoled, again sounding like Papa. "But yeh matrimonial sites se umeed hata le bhen, arranged karna hai toh traditional kar."

"Traditional kaisa? Rishto ki line lagane wali Tuntun mausi nahi hai mere paas." One of the consequences of my parents' love marriage was their loss of contact with the relatives who would set up old fashioned matches. And frankly, I wasn't too fond of that idea, it didn't give me a lot of control.

"I'll be your Tuntun mausi," Neeti said, stuffing her boob back into her bra once Kamya had stopped sucking it. "I've plenty of cousins looking to marry. Do you have any specifications?"

"At this point, I'll throw a varmala at anyone who stays the fuck away from social media."

~.~

Neeti's cousin definitely didn't have social media. His hairline suggested he'd graduated college before Zuckerberg had learned addition.

Seventh time's a charm? No? I hope not.

I reigned in my judgement.

"A chef huh?" he asked in between chewing a spoonful of his bhalla papdi. He was very specific about liking more red chutney over it and little to no green chutney. And two packets of curd.

I reigned in my judgement again.

"Yeah, I love food, I love cooking and I was in tenth grade when I decided that while I did want a high powered, high paying career, I didn't want to go through a rigorous academic education to achieve it."

He shook his head in agreement, wiping his thin goatee. It was unnecessary, even I grew a better moustache than he did.

I really need to stop judging him Hey Bhagwan.

"So um," my fork stabbed the limp lettuce of a dry burger. The food here was offensively bad. I looked over Rajesh's-God even his name was boring-balding head to our parents' table, trying to make eye contact with Papa, but he was too busy chatting up Rajesh's father. For a person who was so opposed to me going for arranged, Papa sure got along with all parents of prospective grooms pretty easily. "What exactly do you do?"

"I'm a regional assistant sales manager for northern India and I'm also the exports head of a big corporation. It's a pretty boring job but it pays well."

"Clearly," I joked, relieved that he was good humoured enough to laugh. "I still have no idea what that means in terms of your actual work."

He bent over his table, across his empty bowl of bhalla papdi until his face was hovering midway between us. Far enough to respect my space but close enough that I had a clear view of his curd-stained tongue. All white. Not an image I wanted to be familiar with. "I'll let you in on a secret Avanti, I have no idea either." To top it off, he winked.

While I was in the process of ordering my mind to come up with a polite reply, a third, amused voice articulated my instinctive thought, "Yaar tujhe laga yeh flirty hai? Mujhe toh ekdum sad sa confession laga."

Rajesh was lethargic in his reaction to the interruption. His face still more on my side of the table than his. "Excuse me?"

He had to crane his neck a full ninety degrees to look at our date crasher. Easily taller than both of us (Rajesh was my height of a modest five feet six) by half a foot, the curse of my existence grinned at my potential husband. A carefully groomed beard didn't hide his square jaw. His hair was a bit outgrown but in a good way, their tips curling towards the end, the kind of loose curls I envied.

I stopped staring.

Refocus. Reorient. Get your shit together.

"Kidding man," Gaurav pretty boy Pandita said, clapping Rajesh's back as he pulled a chair from an empty table next to ours and sat right between us, denim clad thigh brushing against my salwaar. "Just saw Avanti from across the hall and-"

"Decided to do another live? A fucking follow up? Get out man we didn't invite you." There it was. My voice. She returned and she remembered to be civil. Well, almost civil.

"Do you know each other?" Rajesh had stopped smiling. He had also stopped looking me in the eye.

"Yes," I spat, straining to keep my voice low. I couldn't create another scene, his cameraman could be somewhere. But I couldn't let Rajesh know either, he'd only agreed to meet me because he wasn't familiar with the internet boycotting me.

"We're friends-"

"-we're not-"

"-thought I'd say hi," finished Gaurav, ignoring me.

Rajesh didn't take my side either. His eyes were getting more shifty before he folded his napkin in his lap. "Umm, look Avanti, I was under the impression that you were in this all in. If you have past baggage," he looked at Gaurav who just smiled sadly, "I don't think you should jump into a marriage."

"That's not what this is-" Rajesh didn't let me finish, dragged his chair back and stood up.

"Thanks bhai, you're a good man to have backed off," Gaurav shook his hand, Rajesh patted his back, and the latter went to his parents. I saw Papa get up, about to approach me before being engaged in conversation by Rajesh.

Am I invisible?

My breaths were choppy, my ears hot. All the pent up rage from the public humiliation and professional setbacks came seething back. I wanted to yell but that would be giving this social media vulture exactly what he wanted. "What the fuck?!" I whisper yelled when Gaurav sat back down. "Do you have any idea ki tune abhi kya kiya hai? Kis liye? Follow up video chahiye? Ek baar kaafi nahi tha? Kaha hai tera cameraman?"

"Samar isn't here. Aur kaisa follow up? I'm not profiting off of your misery Avanti, I deleted the live as soon as I realized what was going on. Been meaning to reach out to you-"

"-BY STALKING ME?" Shit I yelled. I didn't mean to. I saw Papa get up again, look over at me. I smiled at him, shook my head. If I was being recorded for a prank again, he couldn't go down with me.

"Co-incidence tha, looked for you back at Yatis but they said you weren't there-"

"-thanks to you I got suspended!"

"-and so I came here for a sponsor deal lunch when I saw you with that, what? Forty year old virgin?"

"He's thirty-three and a really good guy." He wasn't but Gaurav didn't know that.

"If he was a good guy he'd have the balls to ask me to leave when I interrupted you guys. Khud hi bhaag gaya batao. Bhagode se shaadi karegi Avanti?" That was a challenge, his smug words ringing in my head.

"You don't get to decide that!" Containing my obvious fury was getting really, really hard but I couldn't let him rile me up. I still couldn't spot his camera guy.

"I do." He teared the dry lettuce I'd been tossing in my plate and crunched it under his goddamn beard. "You'll marry me."

~.~

a/n

Happy Republic Day!

The very first conversation between Neeti and Avanti is lowkey inspired from that iconic scene in Order of the Phoenix where Professor McGonagall goes, "Have a biscuit Potter."

Anyway, I've a natural tendency to write slow burn romances, because those are the only good ones, but considering this is an arranged marriage story, there would be less emphasis on the courtship part right? Idk I'm just winging it. Sorta, I referenced the OG play by Willy boy a lot while writing this chapter, hope it was okay.

Today was a really, really, happy Republic Day because Anjali_Dedha is an amazing writer and graphic artist and she made these beauties for TSG.

Her book Tyaag is an absolute gem! I'm only a couple of chapters in but the detailing, the historical richness and her descriptive writing is so gorgeous it'll force a shrew like Avanti to give it a kiss.

Geddit? Because Avanti's a chef? Nvm.

Thanks for reading!