“It is not precisely tradition for?—”
“It is my tradition, Arjun. I've decided. Casey, you're coming. Wear something you don't mind getting paste on.”
So here I am. Wearing a white kurta that Priya produced from somewhere and that fits me surprisingly well across the shoulders, which makes me suspect she had it tailored without telling me. My legs are folded beneath me on the cushion, and Geeta is bent over my right hand, drawing intricate, looping patterns across my palm with a steady stream of dark brown paste that flows from the tip of her squeeze bottle like ink from a calligraphy pen.
I’m transfixed.
I didn’t expect this. I expected henna to be decorative, a pretty pattern on skin, the kind of thing you see at festivals and street fairs. I didn’t expect it to be this. Geeta's hands move with the unhurried, meditative precision of a master calligrapher, each line flowing into the next, each curve connected to the one before it, building a pattern that is slowly, beautifully, covering my enormous hand in a latticework of leaves and vines and flowers so delicate they look like they're growing from my skin.
“The designs tell a story,” Priya says, settling onto the cushion beside me. She extends her own hands, already partially covered in deep red-brown patterns that climb from her fingertips to her wrists. “In wedding Mehndi, the bride's henna contains the groom's initials hidden in the design. The groom has to find them on the wedding night.” She grins. “We're not there yet, obviously. But that doesn't mean we can't hide things in yours.”
“What happens if he can't find them?”
“Then he's not observant enough to deserve her, and frankly she should reconsider the whole arrangement.” Priya grins. “In your case, I've asked Geeta to incorporate something for both of you. Since we're adapting.”
I look down at my hand. Geeta’s working on the centre of my palm now, and in the middle of the vine pattern, half-hidden among curling leaves, I can see it: a tiny, perfect, unmistakable scalpel. So small you'd miss it if you weren't looking. But it's there, nestled among the flowers, a surgeon's blade rendered in henna on the same palm that holds that surgeon's hand every night.
My throat does something inconvenient.
“Priya,” I say, and my voice is rougher than I intended.
“Don't you dare cry on the henna,” she says briskly. “It'll smudge.”
I don't cry. But I stare at the tiny scalpel on my palm for a long time, and Geeta pats my wrist with the quiet, knowing gentleness of an artist who has painted love stories onto skin for many years and recognizes the real ones.
Kavita appears with a tray of sweets so laden it looks like a structural engineering challenge. “Eat,” she commands, setting the tray on the floor beside me. “The henna needs to set for two hours. You cannot move your hands. So, I will feed you.” She picks up a piece of barfi and holds it to my mouth with the matter-of-fact efficiency of a Kapoor Auntie who has been feeding people as an act of love for her entire life.
I open my mouth. She places the barfi on my tongue. It’s pistachio and cardamom and so sweet it makes my teeth ache, and Kavita watches me chew with an expression of deep, maternal satisfaction.
“Good boy,” she says, and feeds me another piece.
Across the room, Sunita has her phone out. She’s photographing the henna process with the methodical thoroughness of a war photographer documenting a campaign. Herthumbs are hovering. The WhatsApp group is about to receive a comprehensive visual report of the Canadian being hand-fed sweets by Kavita while having love stories painted on his palms, and there’s nothing I can do about it because my hands are covered in wet henna and I’m at the complete mercy of the Kapoor auntie network and Priya.
Arjun arrives forty-five minutes late.
He appears in the archway of the women's parlour with a cautious, evaluative expression on his face. It’s as if he knows he’s entering a room that contains multiple threats and at least one person with a camera phone. He’s wearing a cream kurta, simpler than mine, and his curls are slightly damp from a shower, and he looks, in the filtered morning light, like something from a Mughal miniature painting, all sharp cheekbones and verdant eyes and elegant, wary composure.
“Arjun!” Priya waves him over with a henna-covered hand. “Sit. Geeta's ready for you.”
“I'm not certain this is?—”
“Sit.”
He sits. He precisely lowers himself onto the cushion beside mine, careful not to touch anything that might transfer henna paste onto his pristine kurta. Geeta takes his right hand, examines it with professional assessment, and begins.
I watch.
I should not watch. I should be looking at my own henna, which is drying beautifully and darkening to a rich, reddish-brown. I should be eating the sweets Kavita keeps pushing toward me. I should be engaging with the aunties, who are chattering around us in a mix of Hindi and English, their voices rising and falling like music.
Instead, I’m watching someone paint love stories onto Arjun Kapoor's hands, and I can’t look away.
His hands are extraordinary. I’ve known this for two years, from across operating rooms and chart exchanges and the brief, electric moments when our fingers touch on acoffee cup or a doorframe. They’re narrow, long-fingered, dexterous, trained to move with microscopic precision inside the skulls of children. They’re the most controlled part of his body, the instruments of his greatest gift, the one thing he trusts absolutely.
And now they’re open. Palm up, resting in Geeta's lap, relaxed and exposed, while a stranger draws on them. The vulnerability of it hits me like a fist. Arjun Kapoor, who clasps these hands behind his back to hide their tremors, who grips clipboards and surgical instruments and the arms of chairs to keep them steady, who has built his entire identity around what these hands can do in an operating room, is sitting on a silk cushion and letting someone paint flowers on them.
His face is soft. Not the manufactured softness of social performance, not the controlled neutrality of the Dread Prince. Actually soft. His eyes are following Geeta's movements with a focused, almost childlike fascination, tracing each line as it appears, and there is something in his expression that I’ve never seen in any room at any time: he looks peaceful. Like the act of sitting still and being decorated, of letting someone else's hands guide the story, has temporarily switched off the relentless, grinding machine of his anxiety.
Geeta draws a vine across the base of his thumb. A leaf unfurls over his index finger. A tiny, intricate paisley blooms in the centre of his palm. The paste is dark against his skin, and his skin is warm brown in the filtered light, and his fingers are impossibly elegant, and I’m looking at his hands the way I imagine he looks at a scan, with total, consuming attention, memorizing every detail.