“Oh my god!” Nina gasped, snorting when Aditi started to chuckle softly as well. “How did you keep a straight face?”
“I had to!” Aditi insisted as she sat back, her tiredness receding slowly. “The poor lady had been through so many medical tests already. You know how it can be for some of them. The pressure they face from the families, the immediate judgement that something must be wrong with only the woman. I couldn’t bear to laugh at her misery.”
“Did the husband finally understand what he was doing wrong?”
Aditi nodded.
“I felt a little like a sex ed instructor at one point. But the silly man was so glad that his wife was healthy, he promised her that he’d get her pregnant immediately.”
“And what did you say?”
“I asked him to please wait until he got home!” Aditi quipped, causing Nina to burst out laughing once more, her eyes bright with mirth.
“Adi, I don't think I’ve ever laughed this much while working on rotations. If I was a boy, I’d have married you just for that.”
“I’ll take you as you are, Nina. I’m not sure any boy is going to like me anyway,” she muttered, picking her phone up when it buzzed.
“The last date didn’t work out either?”
Aditi pouted, shaking her head as she swiped on her messages.
“How many is that?”
“Eleven,” she admitted dully, her lower lip jutting out further when Nina’s eyes grew big at that number.
“I can’t believe you’ve crashed and burned through elevendifferent men,” Nina said, not unkindly. “Your double-D count keeps increasing.”
“Double-D?”
“Dickhead dates,” Nina explained with a single shoulder shrug, as if it had been perfectly clear.
“It wasn’t all my fault,” Aditi sniffed. “Some of them didn’t like me, which is fine. I’m not everyone's type. But some of them were absolute jerks who should never procreate.”
“Like DD number 2. The silencer.”
Aditi grumbled under her breath, taken back to one of the early dates she’d been set up on when she’d first landed in Mumbai. DD number two had been Ananth Sivakumar, age twenty-nine, a Sanskrit professor who had been so annoyed at her asking him questions during their date that he’d put his spoon down, looked her in the eye, and announced, “You talk a lot.”
His tone made it clear it wasn’t a compliment and she’d spent the rest of her very short dinner in silence. While he had suggested a second meeting, she had refused. Little did she know then that she’d eventually consider it one of her better dates.
“Who was the guy who stalked you on Instagram?” Nina asked after a bit.
“Oh him!” Aditi recalled, shuddering when she remembered Rahul Ayyar, the twenty-eight-year-old IT expert.
“I’m Rahul. Naam toh suna hoga.” He’d grinned, shaking her hand for a lot longer than she’d have liked.
The overused dialogue wouldn’t have bothered her, considering she loved Shahrukh Khan. She would have probably quipped back with a dialogue of her own, except he spent the entirety of the evening talking to her breasts. Eventually she’d had enough, and had slammed the table hard enough to startle him.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“My eyes are about ten inches north of where you've been staring, asshole.”
Just as she was about to leave, he’d called her back.
“Do you think I could take a picture of you? Just for the memories?” he’d asked, reaching for his phone.
“You touch that phone and I'll make you eat it!”
“Tellme you blocked him after that!” Nina exclaimed, creeped out on Aditi’s behalf.