“And when did the relationship begin?” she continues, seamlessly refilling her teacup with the steady hand of someone who has never in their life been rattled by anything.
“About eight months ago,” I say, reciting the script Arjun and I rehearsed. “We kept it private because of the workplace dynamic. Arjun's pretty protective of his personal life.”
“He is appallingly private,” Meera corrects, and for the first time, I hear something in her voice that’s not strategic. It’s tired. It’s the quiet, worn frustration of a mother who has spent years reaching for a son who keeps retreating further behind glass. “He tells me nothing. He works. He operates. He calls once a week and discusses the weather and his surgical schedule and absolutely nothing of substance. I learned about his last relationship from his university Facebook account in Cambridge. He was twenty-two.”
Arjun's jaw clenches so hard I can hear his teeth grinding.
“Arjun,” I say, and I put my hand on his knee.
It's not strategic or rehearsed. It's the instinct I've had since the moment I met him, the bone-deep, unthinking impulse to put myself between this man and whatever or whomever is hurting him. My hand settles on his knee, warm and steady, and I feel the tension in his leg like a live wire, humming and taut and barely contained.
He looks down at my hand. He looks up at me. His green eyes are wide, and in them I can see the war: the part of him that wants to pull away because this is too real, too close, too much, too soon, and the part of him that wants to lean in so badly it's making him shake.
He doesn't pull away.
Meera watches my hand on her son's knee. Her expression doesn’t change. But something behind her eyes moves, something deep and careful.
“Well,” she says, and her voice has gone soft in a way that doesnot match any translation in the dossier. “It seems you know my son better than I expected.”
She sets her teacup down with a quiet clink. The sound is decisive.
“Now,” she says, and the warmth evaporates like dew in the Rajasthani sun, replaced by something bright and sharp and entirely businesslike. “Let us discuss the practical matters. The engagement dinner is Friday evening. There will be seventy-two guests. I have arranged for Tarun, our family's designer, to take your measurements. The ceremony will follow traditional Roka protocols, adapted for a same-sex partnership, which I personally negotiated with Pandit-ji over three rather spirited phone calls.” She pauses, the smallest flicker of what might be pride crossing her face. “I am nothing if not progressive when it suits the occasion.”
“That's really thoughtful, Meera,” I say, and I mean it. Whatever guerilla warfare she's waging, the woman reorganized a traditional ceremony for her gay son, and that’s not nothing.
“Additionally,” she continues, as if I haven't spoken, “I will need your exact birth time, date, and location for the astrological compatibility assessment.”
“3:47 a.m., March 12th, 1993, Huntsville General Hospital.”
She blinks. It's the first time I've seen her blink at something I've said, and the satisfaction is profound.
“You have your birth time memorized.”
“My mom tells the story every birthday. Ten pounds, two ounces. They thought she was having twins. She wasn't. It was just me.”
“Ten pounds,” Meera repeats, and her eyes travel from my shoulders to my hands to the general, unavoidable enormity of me with an expression that suggests she’s beginning to understand the physics of the situation.
“He was a large baby,” Arjun says quietly, and I glance at him, startled, because Arjun voluntarily contributing information to this conversation is as expected as a sudden solar eclipse.
“Evidently,” Meera says. She picks up her teacup again. “I will pass the details to Pandit-ji. I expect the preliminary chart analysis by tomorrow afternoon.” Her eyes find mine over the rim, and there's something there, something sharp and measuring and not entirely hostile. “I hope the stars are favourable, Casey. For everyone's sake.”
She stands. The movement is fluid, unhurried, the trained grace of an aristocrat who has never made an awkward exit. “Dinner is at eight. Priya will show you to the guest suite. I've had it prepared with fresh linens and additional pillows.” Her gaze travels between me and Arjun with a precision that misses absolutely nothing. “I assumed you'd be comfortable sharing.”
She leaves. The silk of her sari whispers against the marble floor as she goes, and the sound of her footsteps fades down the corridor with the measured, purposeful rhythm of a general who has completed her reconnaissance and is now returning to her war room to plan the next phase.
The drawing room is quiet. The fountain murmurs outside. A bird, something bright and tropical that I can’t name, calls once from the garden and goes silent.
I exhale. It’s the first full exhale I’ve allowed myself since I sat down, and it comes out of me like something that’s been held underwater for twenty minutes.
“So,” I say. “That went well.”
Arjun turns his head and looks at me with an expression of such disbelief that I want to frame it.
“Well?” he repeats. “She just performed a comprehensive socioeconomic evaluation of your entire life, cross-referenced your birth time for astrological ammunition, and implied that your medical specialization is insufficient for her son. In what diagnostic framework does that constitute 'well'?”
“She didn't hate me.”
“She never hates on the first meeting. She gathers intelligence on the first meeting. The hating comes later, after she has identified all the structuralweaknesses.”