PLANNING AND PLOTTING
YUVAAN
Dinner has quietly become my favourite part of the day. If someone had told me that a few months ago, I would've laughed.
Dinner used to be efficient. Functional.
Another task squeezed between meetings and paperwork.
I'd sit alone at one end of a table long enough to seat twenty people, eating whatever had been served while reading reports balanced against my water glass.
Most evenings I barely tasted the food before someone appeared with another file needing my signature.
Somehow, without my noticing exactly when it happened, that changed. Now the dining room is noisy. Comfortably noisy.
Maa is at one end of the table telling us, with great enthusiasm, about some scandal involving the gardener from a neighbouring estate and the head cook's sister.
Kairav is somehow managing to eat twice as fast as everyone else while arguing with Amish over speakerphone about an injured civet cat that apparently refuses to cooperate with rescue efforts.
The conversation keeps jumping wildly between veterinary advice and complaints about the cook refusing to make extra rotis.
And between Anamika and me sits Sara.
She swings her legs beneath her chair, humming softly to herself between bites, her entire body carrying the restless energy that usually means she's planning something.
I've learned to recognise that look. It almost always ends with a request.
"Mister." She places her spoon down with exaggerated seriousness before folding both hands on the table. I wait. "I have holidays."
"Oh?"
"Four whole days."
I nod thoughtfully. "No school?"
She shakes her head so enthusiastically her ponytail bounces. "No school."
Something tells me this isn't the important part. "And?"
She straightens as if she is going to announce something important. "Riya is going to Goa." A pause. "Kabir is going to his grandmother's village." Another pause. "He gets to ride a real horse." She sighs with heartbreaking tragedy. "I've never gone on a vacation."
The words are simple.
Matter-of-fact.
Not accusing.
Just . . . True.
"Not even once."
Anamika stiffen almost imperceptibly. "Sara . . . " Her voice is gentle. "We don't need to—"
"I just want to go somewhere." Sara turns toward me instead.
"Anywhere." She thinks for a second. "Somewhere with trees.
" Another thoughtful pause. "Or water." She brightens.
"Or trees and water." The pout begins. I've discovered that Sara doesn't deploy it carelessly.
It's a strategic weapon. One she knows works far more often than it should.
"Sara," Anamika says again, cheeks already beginning to colour with embarrassment. "We don't need to trouble anyone. It's alright."
"I only want one vacation." Sara looks directly at me.
"I've never had one." I look at her hopeful face.
Then at Anamika beside her. And somewhere inside myself I realise something rather obvious.
There was never a version of this conversation where I said no.
I would've agreed before she even finished asking.
If she asked me for an ocean, I'd probably start looking for engineers.
"We'll go." The words leave my mouth before anyone else speaks.
Sara freezes. "Really?"
Her eyes become impossibly wide. I smile. "Really." The grin that spreads across her face is so enormous it seems physically impossible for one small child.
She throws both arms into the air. "Yay!" Then immediately launches herself sideways into me, hugging me with enough enthusiasm to nearly knock me off balance. I laugh despite myself and hug her back.
Anamika is staring at me. Her mouth has actually fallen open. "Yuvaan . . . "
There it is.
"You don't have to—"
The sentence I've heard in a hundred different versions over the past few weeks. You don't have to pay the school fees. You don't have to open the bookshop. You don't have to help. You don't have to care.
I look at her and smile. "I want to." The same words she'd heard from me in the polo tent.
Recognition flashes across her face. Then, almost despite herself, she smiles too.
It's small. Reluctant. Still carrying traces of surrender.
She doesn't continue the argument. Which, with Anamika, is practically the equivalent of winning it.
"Oh, wonderful!" Maa claps her hands together happily. "We haven't had a proper family holiday in years." She turns toward Kairav. "When was the last one?"
He groans dramatically. "The hill station."
"Oh dear."
"The one where it rained for four straight days." Maa bursts into laughter. "The guesthouse roof leaked."
"And there were monkeys." Kairav groans, "They stole my breakfast."
"They stole your breakfast because you kept feeding them," Maa reminds him.
"I was making friends."
"You were encouraging criminals."
"They were adorable criminals."
Maa stares at him. He finally gives up arguing. "Fine."
He reaches for another roti. "I'm coming. I need a break anyway.” He takes a big bite. “Amish can manage the shelter for a few days."
From the phone comes an indignant, "I can hear you, idiot."
"I know." Kairav grins. "That's why I said it."
Anamika looks from one face to another. " . . . You're all coming?" There's genuine surprise in her voice.
Maa blinks. "Of course." She gently places the spoon down. "As a matter of fact . . . " She frowns lightly. "What sort of family holiday leaves half the family behind?" The word hangs gently in the air.
Family.
I glance toward Anamika.
Her expression changes so subtly most people wouldn't notice. I do. Hesitation etches her face but soon it softens into something almost impossibly gentle. Like she's still getting used to hearing herself included inside that word without conditions.
Without explanations. Without anyone adding . . . except. Sara, meanwhile, has abandoned all interest in dinner.
She is now drafting what appears to be a legally binding holiday itinerary.
"We'll swim." She counts on one finger. "I'll ride horses." Second finger. "There has to be a bonfire." Third finger. "We'll roast marshmallows." Fourth. "If there are monkeys, we feed them."
Kairav immediately points across the table. "See? Even Sara agrees with me."
"No," Maa says.
"She agrees with the monkeys."
"And . . . " Sara continues before anyone can interrupt.
"I want to sleep inside a real tent." She points at me.
"Not the pretend one Mister made in the garden.
" I smile into my glass. That camping experiment had lasted approximately forty-three minutes before she'd demanded hot chocolate and returned indoors. " . . . This one has to be real."
"Noted."
She nods with satisfaction. Only then do I notice it. It's tiny. Barely there. A glance. Maa looks toward Sara. One eyebrow lifts. Sara's mouth twitches. Not quite a smile. More like . . . a shared secret.
A heartbeat later they're both looking back at their plates with expressions so innocent they're almost suspicious.
I narrow my eyes slightly. I know that look. I've seen it before.
Years ago, Maa wore that exact expression immediately before arranging the seating plan at one of our cousin's weddings so that I spent an entire evening trapped beside the daughter of one of her oldest friends.
She'd claimed it was a coincidence. It absolutely wasn't. That expression means planning. It means strategy. It means my mother has already thought three steps ahead while the rest of us are still discussing step one.
I look back toward Sara. She's concentrating very hard on eating her dal. Far too hard. The performance is almost convincing. Almost. My five-year-old co-conspirator has clearly been recruited.
I glance toward Anamika. She's completely oblivious. At the moment she's busy trying to negotiate Sara down from four bonfires to one, explaining that forests generally prefer not to be set on fire repeatedly.
Sara argues that one bonfire every evening is perfectly reasonable.
I decide not to interfere.
Instead I watch Maa refill her water glass with an expression of remarkable satisfaction for someone supposedly thinking about nothing more complicated than holiday plans.
A slow smile threatens at the corner of my mouth. I don't know exactly what they're planning. But I know they're planning something. And experience has taught me one very important lesson.
When my mother and a determined five-year-old join forces . . . Everyone else becomes collateral damage.
Quietly, I make a mental note to keep a very close eye on both of them throughout this holiday. I have the distinct feeling this trip is going to be anything but peaceful.