nineteen A Series of Unfortunate Events
nineteen
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Icouldn’t help but wonder if Keshav bhaiya would still be treating Neil’s taste-buds to his top-shelf whisky had he known where his tongue had been last week.
Highly doubtful, considering he’d nearly murdered Arjun the day he’d found out about us.
But tonight, he was too deep in host-mode to pick up on the undercurrent between us, buzzing around the living room and refilling drinks like his life depended on it.
This had not been on the agenda for the day.
When we wrapped the shoot around sunset, the original plan was to drop everyone back at the hotel and maybe take Tanya out to Mall Road for dinner.
Simple, drama-free and, more importantly, Neil-free.
But then my brother showed up to pick me up, started being pally with everyone—especially Neil, who’d complimented his Thar (sweet ride, bro) and immediately won him over—and within five minutes, he’d invited the whole crew home.
Most of them (thankfully) declined and scattered off into the night, but Neil seemed to think the idea was fantastic. Abhinav and Rhea chimed in with enthusiastic nods. So I had no choice but to telepathically beg Tanya to come with us for moral support.
So far, nothing catastrophic had happened, but I could feel the universe warming up in the background.
We’d wrapped up dinner a while ago and were now spread across the living room, cupping our drinks in our hands as rain tapped lightly on the tiled roof of our hillside cottage.
Rhea was curled up on the rug with a glass of wine, Abhinav was sinking into the single-seater like he planned to nap there, Tanya was browsing through the books on the wall-mounted wooden shelf and Neil was wedged between my father and brother on the couch, making polite conversation.
My mother hovered with a plate of bakery sweet treats she was forcing on anyone who made eye contact.
And as if all that wasn’t weird enough, Arjun decided to wander in with a sack of fresh green apples slung over his shoulder.
He bent down to touch my mum’s feet before asking where he should put the apples. ‘Kavya will show you,’ she said, cupping his face with that maternal warmth he always seemed to bring out in her. Reluctantly, I peeled myself off the rug and led Arjun into the kitchen.
‘You didn’t have to bring anything.’ I turned my back to him as I set the jute bag on the counter. ‘It’s too much.’
‘It’s just a few apples. Relax.’
But it wasn’t, though. He’d been doing these thoughtful, familiar things all weekend, slipping back into old patterns like no time had passed since our breakup. Offering up his guest house, helping out with the shoot and touching my mom’s feet, for God’s sake. It made me feel weirdly boxed in.
He seemed to sense my discomfort. ‘Hey, look at me,’ he said, leaning against the kitchen counter next to me. ‘I’m not trying to rekindle anything. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss you.’
I looked down at my hands, feeling the need to pick at my fingernails.
‘I just want you in my life, however you’ll have me. Friend, emergency contact, guy who feeds you apples … whatever. And if there’s a chance that one day it becomes more … great. If not, that’s okay too.’
He waited patiently until I looked up and met his eyes. There was an earnestness in them that I couldn’t quite shrug off. ‘It doesn’t feel right …’ I finally managed. ‘I don’t want you to put your life on hold for me.’
‘That’s the thing, Kavya … I’m not doing it for you.’ He brushed a strand of hair away from my face, then dropped his hand to his side and walked out of the kitchen.
I stayed where I was, reeling from what Arjun had said.
When I finally reappeared in the living room, face flushed and heart unsettled, I could feel Neil’s eyes on me, searching my face for clues.
I pulled a chair from the dining table and sat down, keeping my gaze on the floor.
Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him.
My mother clapped her hands together, interrupting my inner turmoil. ‘Why don’t you kids play that dancing game?’
‘No,’ I said immediately. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘What game?’ Tanya perked up.
Keshav bhaiya grinned. ‘Oh, you don’t know? Kavya basically invented it when she was ten. She used to bully everyone who came home into playing it.’
‘I did not bully anyone,’ I muttered.
‘She even made a manual for it with all the rules,’ he chuckled fondly. ‘It’s like dumb charades, but with Bollywood hook steps. The opposite team gives you a song name and you have to make your team guess it by dancing it out.’
Rhea chimed in from the floor. ‘That sounds like so much fun.’
I groaned internally. I’d spent the whole day navigating emotional landmines. Forgive me if I didn’t want to embarrass myself this evening by busting out thumkas in front of not one, but two men I could barely make eye contact with.
‘Can you move the table first? Last time, Kavya almost kicked the vase,’ my father said.
Despite my attempts to kill the idea, the room was already being split into two teams: me, Tanya and Rhea versus Neil, Abhinav, Arjun and Keshav bhaiya.
Girls vs boys. My mother appointed herself judge and dad pretended to be uninterested but immediately started giving illegal clues from the sidelines.
The first few rounds went by smoothly. Tanya did a beginner-friendly rendition of ‘It’s the Time to Disco’, Arjun countered with a half-hearted hip shake from ‘Badtameez Dil’, Rhea showcased her classical training with an unfairly graceful ‘Dola Re Dola’ and Keshav bhaiya did Hrithik’s signature move from ‘Ek Pal Ka Jeena’. And then my brother gave me my cue.
‘Why do I get such a hard one?’ I whined, but I was already setting my wine glass aside and tugging the rug closer to soften my landing.
I tried not to focus on the way Neil was watching me—curious, amused and with a tinge of trepidation, like he wasn’t sure what side of me he might discover.
Here goes nothing. I took a deep breath and launched into the SRK routine I’d performed a million times as a kid, ending with the dramatic landing on both knees.
‘Chaiyya Chaiyya,’ Tanya and Rhea screamed in unison.
And then it was Neil’s turn. Tanya whispered the song into his ear and his face went blank. He turned to look at her, horrified. ‘No way.’
She just smiled at him sweetly and walked back to where our team was seated.
Neil scanned the room like he was genuinely considering escaping through a window.
Just when I thought he was going to chicken out, he put both hands behind his head, stuck his hip out, and began doing the extremely suggestive, ridiculously over the top pelvic-thrust hookstep of ‘Chikni Chameli’ in my parents’ living room.
My brother howled and my mother covered her mouth to hide her laughter and I …
I felt like my heart might explode from the overwhelming fondness I felt for him in that moment.
But then the game ended and the moment passed as quickly as it had come. My parents retired to their room and my brother decided that the next logical activity was whipping out the PS5. Tanya and I watched in awe as the guys got their asses kicked at FIFA by Rhea.
‘Wanna bet on which one of them is going to hit on her tonight?’ Tanya asked, waggling her eyebrows in their direction.
For my sake, I hoped it wouldn’t be anyone other than Abhinav. After a few minutes of laughing at their dramatic meltdowns, Tanya excused herself to go use the loo.
‘Hey Tanya,’ I called out after her, remembering the plumbing issue my mum had warned me about in the guest washroom. ‘Can you use the one in my bedroom? It’s up the stairs and to your right.’
I took the opportunity to escape to the front porch with my glass of wine.
The drizzle had died down, leaving behind a frosty breeze in its place.
The porch was strung with the old fairy lights I had put up two years ago for Christmas that no one had bothered to take down.
The wooden steps leading to the vegetable garden were damp, but I sat down on the top step anyway.
I rubbed my arms, trying to chase away the chill.
Bursts of laughter and Rhea’s triumphant shrieks were still audible through the wooden walls, but out here, it was easy to let the noise fade into the background.
I let my eyes roam over the garden—the flowerbeds glistening with rain, the tomato bush that had spilled out of its little planter and the old wooden fence casting long shadows across the stone path that led to the road outside.
It all felt untouched and precious, like the outside world hadn’t gotten to it yet.
A small pocket of calm in a day that had been anything but.
The wind picked up again, brushing past my hair and making me shiver for the second time. The front door creaked softly and footsteps tapped the wooden floor behind me. I didn’t turn around, assuming it was Tanya. But then a pair of strong hands draped a warm blanket over my shoulders.
‘Thought you might be cold,’ Neil said, his voice so low that it almost got lost in the breeze.
‘Oh … um, thanks,’ I clutched the blanket around me and continued looking out into the distance, hoping he’d take the hint and head back inside. But, of course, he didn’t. Instead, he lowered himself onto the step beside me, while I tried to gather whatever was left of my composure.
‘Your house is beautiful, Kavya,’ he said after a minute. ‘All those rants about Bombay … it all makes sense now.’
‘Can you not?’ I exhaled. ‘I’m not in the mood to be psychoanalysed on my own front porch.’
‘Okay, okay.’ He held up his hands in surrender. ‘I’m just saying … it’s easy to see why you miss this.’
I fiddled with the edge of the blanket and conceded, ‘Who wouldn’t miss a place where people shove food at you every ten minutes?’
‘Or make you dance to “Chikni Chameli” for post-dinner entertainment.’