“Yeah,” I say, turning to face her directly. “That’s a good way to put it.”
“And you are good at this?”
“I think so. The kids seem to think so. I do magic tricks.”
“Magic tricks.” Her eyes narrow slightly. One corner of her mouth moves, and then, to the visible astonishment of every auntie present, she lets out a short, sharp bark of laughter. It’s the laugh of someone who has not been genuinely surprised in years and is deeply annoyed to find herself surprised now. “A magician. Meera will have a stroke. You must show me.”
The aunties exchange glances. I look down at the table. I pick up a linen napkin. I’ve done this trick approximately four thousand times in the paediatric ER, and it works on crying six-year-olds and it works on suspicious grandmothers, because the principle’s the same: surprise breaks through defences.
I fold the napkin in three quick movements, tuck a corner,shake it once, and pull. A small fabric flower blooms between my fingers. I’ve made roses from napkins, birds from tongue depressors, and once, in a memorable night shift, an entire zoo of gauze animals for a ward full of kids who couldn’t sleep. The napkin flower isn’t my best work. But it’s clean, it’s quick, and when I hold it out to Daadi, her eyes widen by a fraction so small that anyone who hadn’t spent two years studying the Kapoor micro-expression playbook would have missed it.
She takes the flower. She turns it over in her weathered, ring-laden fingers, examining it with careful, unhurried attention.
“He does magic tricks,” she says, to no one in particular, and puts the flower on the arm of her chair.
Sunita is texting at a velocity that suggests her phone might catch fire from the friction.
The tea continues. The questions come in waves, each auntie taking a turn, and I handle them the way I handle a busy ER shift: one at a time, with patience and warmth and the understanding that every question, no matter how pointed, comes from a place of caring about Arjun.
Do I own property in Toronto? No, I rent. I live in Kensington Market. It’s a great old neighbourhood.
Do I have savings? Some. Doctors in Canada do okay. Not Kapoor okay, obviously, but my mom didn’t raise someone who can’t keep the lights on or Pop Tarts in the cupboard.
Have I considered Arjun’s family obligations? I’m learning about them. That’s also what this trip is for.
Do I want children? The question comes from Sunita, who delivers it with the subtle precision of a drone strike. I pause. The pavilion goes silent.
“I work with kids every day,” I say. “I love kids. But that’s a conversation for me and Arjun to have, not for a tea party.”
A ripple passes through the aunties. It’s not disapproval. It’s something closer to surprised respect, the recognition that the giant Canadian just drew a boundary, politely but firmly, and that the boundary is protecting Arjun’s privacy. Kavita pushes anotherplate of mithai toward me. This time, I’m fairly certain it’s a reward.
Arjun’s cousin Ananya, who has been sitting near the edge of the group and has been trying to Google my watch model for forty-five minutes, finally speaks. “Your shirt is nice. Is it linen? Where did you buy it?”
“My mom got it for me. Winners, I think. Maybe forty bucks?”
Ananya’s face performs a complex emotional journey. I eat a piece of mithai and pretend not to notice.
An hour passes. Then ninety minutes. The sunlight shifts, the flowers sway in a warm breeze, and the tea is refilled three times. I eat everything that’s put in front of me. Four samosas. Three pieces of mithai. Two cups of chai. And something syrupy and golden called jalebi that I’m prepared to commit unspeakably heinous crimes for. Crimes that potentially violate the Geneva Convention. By the time I’m done, even the most sceptical aunties are softening. Food is a language, and apparently I’m fluent.
The conversation mellows. The questions shift from interrogation to curiosity, from assessment to something warmer. Radha asks about Toronto winters. Kavita wants to know if Oliver is well-trained (“He’s a disaster, but a very loveable disaster” ). Sunita, who has been texting this entire time, actually puts her phone down for thirty seconds to ask me about hockey, which she apparently follows because her nephew in Mississauga took her to a Leafs game and she has opinions about their defence, or lack thereof. Ananya, who has been silently calculating the net worth of everything I’m wearing for the past hour, grudgingly admits she’s never been to Canada and asks if it’s really as cold as people say.
I’m starting to think I might have survived this.
And then Daadi speaks again.
“Everyone, leave.”
The words are quiet. They’re not shouted or commanded.They’re simply stated, with the calm authority of a matriarch who has been the gravitational centre of this family for sixty years. Teacups are set down. Saris rustle. The aunties rise, one by one, in a choreographed retreat that speaks to years of practice. Sunita gives her phone one last, longing glance before putting it in her handbag. Kavita pats my shoulder as she passes, and I think this act provisionally accepts me into some kind of food-based alliance. Ananya leaves without looking back, presumably to call someone about the psychic damage of a forty-dollar shirt.
In thirty seconds, the pavilion is empty except for me and Daadi.
She sits in her carved chair, her cane between her knees, the napkin flower still resting on its arm. She looks at me for a long time. Her eyes move across my face with a steady, unhurried thoroughness that feels less like scrutiny and more like a reading. She’s not assessing my value. She is assessing my truth.
“You love my grandson,” she says.
It’s not a question.
The pavilion’s very quiet. My heart’s pounding so hard I can feel it in my fingertips, and I’m sitting across from an eighty-year-old woman with a silver cane and green eyes that cut through every wall I’ve ever built, and she has just said the thing I’ve never said directly, plainly, to someone in Arjun’s world. Not as a confession to my mom over FaceTime, not as a thought I turn over alone at night, but as a truth spoken out loud in the sunlight in a garden in Rajasthan.