Chapter 3
KABIR
He stared at himself in the mirror of the empty airport bathroom.
Dark circles ringed his eyes, bags hanging under them from endless sleepless nights.
He’d gelled his hair into submission before cramming a baseball cap on it.
Between that and his weeks’ worth of stubble, which was more of a beard now, he was pretty sure no one recognised him.
For an additional level of dissociation, he’d dressed in beige chinos and a formal blue shirt with a white pinstripe.
Clothes he wouldn’t normally be caught dead in.
They had the added benefit of covering up the sleeve of tattoos he had running down his left arm.
“Incoming,” Rahul called out softly from the entrance of the bathroom.
Time was up. Kabir pulled the cap lower, as people started to wander in.
He kept his gaze on the floor as he walked past them and out of the bathroom, Rahul falling into step beside him.
They’d already finished with immigration and collected their baggage.
All they needed to do now was leave. He could feel the weight of people’s eyes on his back and tensed automatically but most just shook their heads and left, unable to place the vaguely familiar man strolling past them.
Rahul was on the phone to Kim telling her where they’d stand for her to pick them up. But when the car pulled up, it was a very different person who erupted out of the Thar and ran full tilt towards Kabir.
Rehan threw himself at him in a man hug that almost landed Kabir on his backside.
“Bro!” he shouted enthusiastically in Kabir’s ear, almost deafening him. “You’re home finally!”
Kabir grinned, hugging the human equivalent of a golden retriever, and hustling him towards the car. All the noise Rehan was making was drawing too much attention to them. From the driver’s seat, Kim aka Kimaya Kashyap aka Kabir’s baby sister and resident pain in the ass, smiled at him.
Kabir paused in the open car door. “She’s driving?” he asked Rehan.
“She can hear you,” Kim replied caustically. “Get in or I’ll leave all of you behind.”
Resigned to dying in the near future, Kabir got in with Rahul, Rehan calling shotgun and diving into the front passenger seat.
“Couldn’t you have brought one of the bigger cars?” Kabir groused as he tried to fit his long legs into the slightly cramped space.
“I like this one,” Kim retorted, leaving the airport, tyres squealing like she was in the latest version of the Fast and the Furious.
Kabir leaned over to pull her braid affectionately. “Brat.”
“Ass.”
“As scintillating as this conversation is,” Rehan interrupted with a heavy sigh, “can we get back to talking about what’s important?”
Kabir tensed. “And that is?”
“ME!”
Rahul laughed, not looking up from his phone screen where he was attending to the million emails and messages that had piled up while they were in the air.
Kabir leaned back in his seat, flexing his muscles and trying to ease the stiffness that had set in from the long flight. First Class or not, he was always happy to get off a plane and step onto land. He preferred to be standing on something that didn’t move.
Which was why when his sister took a turn on to the main road at full speed a squeak escaped him. Rahul looked up startled as Kim continued to weave through the manic Mumbai traffic like a Formula One racer on steroids.
“Umm-“ Rahul glanced at Kabir for direction.
“Pray,” Kabir told him.
When Kim swung into a U-turn to the accompanying screech of horns and abuse, Kabir’s antenna twitched.
“Kimi, where are we going?”
“Where else?” Rehan turned to answer, his eyes dancing with mischief. “You’re here for the wedding. So, we have to go to the wedding house no?”
The wedding house? Tanisha’s house? Panic started to swim through his veins.
He wasn’t ready for this. He was jet lagged, exhausted, and heart sore.
He wanted to go home and wallow in his misery for a bit before he stood in front of everyone he loved and pretended his heart was made of titanium and not held in the slim hands of an elf with gloriously, wild curls that looked like she’d stuck her finger in a socket on a good day or danced in a storm on a bad one.
“Ma and Pa are there,” Kim said, her voice low and commiserating. It raked nails down his pride and he stiffened. “The Malhotras are coming to discuss the wedding plans and Karam Chachu and Shikha Maasi wanted everyone to be there.”
“Okay,” he said tersely, ignoring Rahul’s pointed gaze and staring out of the window. This was going to happen sooner or later. He may as well get the first meeting out of the way as soon as possible.
Maybe then the vicious claws digging into his heart would retract. He took a deep breath and refocused his mind.
“Reh,” he said, meeting his cousin’s bright glance. “What’s happening on the dating front?”
He let his mind wander as Rehan launched into a spiel about the Goddess he was currently dating, the love of his life, in this lifetime and every one to follow. Rehan was always in love, it was always meant for eternity but usually lasted a couple of weeks.
Kim’s quiet gaze snagged on his in the rearview mirror again, concern darkening it.
“Look at the road, dumbass,” he mouthed at her.
“Go to hell,” she mouthed back, with a sweet smile.
He was already in hell he thought as he stared out of the window, the streets of Mumbai flashing past him.
He saw a group of young boys walk out of a small tenement like structure with cracked, tin roofs.
They were laughing, smoking, and smacking each other around, in jest but the potential for violence hung in the air that clung to them.
There but for the grace of God…
Kimi turned into the gate that led to the Bakshi bungalow, the gate that led to…her.
The front door burst open the minute Kim came to a screeching halt that had them all flying forward in their seats, Kabir’s mother flying out of it. His dad was not far behind, hurrying down the few steps behind her.
No, he thought, not God, a lump of emotion clogging his throat, as he got out of the car and wrapped his mother in a hug.
There but for the grace of the people standing in front of him…
Everything he had, everything he felt, everything he’d achieved was because Ved and Aayushi Kashyap had plucked him out of abuse and poverty and offered him a home.
They’d loved him, they’d protected him, and they’d cherished him, not just at his best, but most of the time at his worst. He lived because they’d loved him.
If not for them, he’d probably have bled out in a ditch a long time ago.
And with them had come this mad, messy extended family who’d welcomed him with open arms into their homes and their lives.
He looked over his mother’s shoulder to where Karam Chachu and Shikha Maasi stood, big smiles on their faces.
He was always welcome, always loved, always home, when he was around them. All of them.
And for a boy who’d been born in the filth of the streets, that was everything. And it was the reason why he’d never shit on their hospitality by loving their daughter, a child born to the privilege of their love and warmth, by soiling her with the dirt of his heritage.
He loved them all so much, her most of all. And that’s why he could never have her.
She wasn’t for him though he would always be hers.