Caste in the Stars

Chapter One

One

The baggage carousel at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport clunked to life, and Priya Solanki stood back, watching suitcase after suitcase glide past until hers came into view.

Two bags were all it took to hold ten years of her life—a failed marriage, a business she had walked away from, and the freedom she had built for herself.

All now completely gone. She’d promised herself she’d never return, yet here she was, out of options.

After dragging her luggage through the terminal, she stepped outside and slid into the back of a waiting cab.

“Where to?” The driver met her eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Moksha Funeral Home,” Priya replied. “In Ajax.”

“Lucky you’re not heading downtown today,” he said as they merged into traffic. “I just returned from a drop-off there, and it was brutal. Bumper to bumper the whole way.”

“Construction?” Priya asked, peering out the window. It was late April, which in Toronto translated to the start of roadwork season.

“Not this time,” he replied. “There was a celebrity sighting at the Hazelton. Some big star from out of town. Turned the whole area into a total gridlock. Traffic was backed up all the way to the highway, nobody moving an inch.”

Priya leaned back, only half listening. A traffic jam over a celebrity sipping an overpriced latte was both absurd and entirely expected. She’d spent the last ten years in Calgary, where the rhythm of life was slower. Here, even at a standstill, the city buzzed with urgency.

The drive to Ajax, a suburb east of Toronto, took a little under an hour.

Clusters of daffodils and crocuses bloomed along the edges of the roadside.

As they approached her old neighborhood, familiar sights greeted Priya like pages from an old diary: the community center where she first learned to swim, the No Frills grocery store where her family did their weekly shopping, the library where she met up with her friend Brooke, though they usually ended up at the McDonald’s across the street.

Every place was exactly as she remembered, yet within Priya, everything had shifted.

When the cab finally turned into the parking lot of the funeral home, Priya straightened, her eyes locking on the building. The weight of what lay ahead twisted in her chest.

“Go around the back, please.” Priya gestured toward the rear lot.

She winced at the fare on the meter, mindful of her dwindling savings. Then she spotted a photo of the cabbie’s children smiling from the dashboard and gave him a generous tip anyway.

Sucker, her thrifty Gujarati ancestors scolded from beyond the grave.

The driver heaved her suitcases out of the trunk, chuckling as he read the tag on one: “You can’t handle my baggage.”

Priya felt a pang of guilt as he set the bag down with a huff. The joke was a little too on the nose. Her baggage, literal and otherwise, was ridiculously heavy.

As the cab drove away, Priya turned toward the building, standing in the very spot where bodies were delivered from the morgue.

A shiver ran down her spine. Death was inevitable, and for her, so was this place.

She thought she had escaped it, but as she stared at the side door to her parents’ second-floor apartment, her certainty crumbled.

She lugged her suitcases up the narrow stairs, each step groaning under her weight.

The wood was worn and uneven, some planks smoothed by years of use, others jagged with splinters, the paint peeling on every one.

She hesitated at the top step, the duct tape still holding it together after all these years.

Despite herself, she smiled. Her father’s handiwork had somehow stubbornly stood the test of time.

Standing by the door, Priya took a deep breath, and almost immediately the rich, smoky scent of rotlis transported her back in time.

Over the years, her annual visits had been brief and dutiful, but some things never changed, like the way her mother’s cooking clung to the walls, familiar and comforting.

She could almost taste the soft, warm flatbreads, and she hadn’t even stepped inside.

As she lifted her hand to knock, the door burst open, and her mother stood there, arms outstretched.

“I knew it!” Her mother beamed, eyes shining. “I can recognize your footsteps anywhere. My Priya baby is home!”

“Mumma.” As Priya stepped into her mother’s embrace, her body relaxed. Ever since her divorce, she had carried the weight of letting them down, of returning as someone who hadn’t made it, but that feeling lifted, replaced by the quiet comfort of home.

“What Mumma-Mumma?” Her mother pulled back with a pout. “You forgot Mumma. You don’t call Mumma, don’t ask Mumma, don’t love Mumma.”

Priya chuckled at her mother’s lightning-fast transition from a warm welcome to a full-on guilt trip. Mumma had mastered the art of emotional drama, keeping the whole family on their toes.

“Enough, Seema,” her father intervened, appearing behind his wife. “She’s only just arrived, and you’ve already started. Let her relax and eat something. Then we’ll both gang up on her.”

Priya laughed, but tears stung the corners of her eyes as she hugged him. She hadn’t known what kind of welcome to expect, but this warmth, this lightness, filled her with relief and gratitude. Pulling both her parents close, she buried her face between them.

“I love you very much,” she said.

For a moment, the three of them remained locked together. Then, as if realizing they’d lingered too long, her parents pulled away. Seema and Rakesh Solanki dispensed affection in appropriate doses, but verbal declarations of love to each other or the kids? Na, baba, na.

Mumma smoothed her nightgown to dispel the awkwardness. Priya couldn’t remember her wearing anything other than button-down nightgowns around the house. When they grew flimsy, Mumma tore them into scraps and used them as a potu to mop the floor.

“Is this everything?” Puppa asked, reaching for Priya’s suitcases.

“This is it.” Priya forced a cheerful smile, hoping it would hide the ache beneath it. Coming home after years of trying to build a life of her own felt like proof that she had failed. She trailed behind her parents, stepping into the familiar living room of their modest apartment.

“So, tell me…” Puppa settled into his usual spot at the dining table and motioned Priya to join him.

But Priya wasn’t ready. Not yet. She slipped into the kitchen instead, where her mother was already busy making chai.

“Let me help.” She opened the cupboard next to the sink and reached for the cups, hoping to stall the conversation that lay ahead—and her parents’ inevitable autopsy of her marriage.

“Priya,” her father called her back, firm and steady.

Priya sighed and carried the cups and sugar bowl over to the table, bracing herself as she sat beside him.

Even though she was twenty-eight, her heart still raced whenever her father wanted to “talk,” and a familiar fight-or-flight response took over her body.

In the past, she had fled, because fighting was disrespectful, but now she had nowhere to run. Her parents held all the power.

Puppa leaned forward, clasping his hands on the table, and fixed his gaze on Priya. “How much did you pay for the taxi?”

Priya’s shoulders relaxed. This she could handle. Rakesh Solanki was a frugal man who took great pride in imparting his money-saving habits. Priya divided the fare in half and gave him the number.

“Hey Bhagwan.” Dear Lord. “Seema, did you hear?”

“I heard. I heard,” Mumma replied from the kitchen. “Priya, you know Ramila ben no jamai no kaka no nano babu?”

“Do I know your friend’s son-in-law’s dad’s brother’s younger son? I don’t think so.”

“Yes, you do. Jignesh. You know. Jignesh.”

“Ah, Jignesh.” Priya had no idea who Jignesh was, but it was easier to let Mumma assume she knew every Gujarati person in the Greater Toronto Area than to suffer a long-winded explanation.

“He gives people a ride to the airport for only ten dollars.” Mumma added ginger and cardamom to the tea before glancing at Priya through the archway that joined the kitchen to the dining area.

“Ten dollars doesn’t even cover the gas, Mumma,” Priya muttered, shaking her head.

“He doesn’t do it for the money. It’s seva for our community. He’s creating good karma. He will reap the rewards one day.”

“So, Jignesh is currying favor with Bhagwanji. Good business strategy. Investing now in the hopes of future gains.”

“Don’t be cheeky.” Mumma stepped out of the kitchen and plopped a plate of hot rotlis on the table. “Why didn’t you come home sooner? A whole year in Calgary, living on your own after you separated from Manoj. What were you thinking?”

Priya smiled faintly, tearing off a piece of rotli and dusting it with sugar. “It’s not like I was the only woman in Calgary living on my own. A lot of my girlfriends live alone too.”

“That’s different.” Mumma poured chai into three cups and took her seat. “You’re our daughter. You don’t need to struggle by yourself when you have a family right here.”

“I know. But I put so much work into building the company Manoj and I started,” Priya said, her voice softening as she looked at Mumma.

“I thought we could still work together, but we didn’t see eye to eye on the business either, so I decided to leave.

” She lifted her cup and took a slow sip.

None of this was a lie, but it wasn’t the full truth either.

The truth was that Calgary had given her the kind of independence she could never have here, the freedom to live life away from her parents’ well-meaning but constant interference—even if it came with loneliness.

Losing her marriage had been painful, but losing her career had shattered what was left of her life out west. Without a partner or a paycheck, coming home had been her only option.