“You must be Casey.”
I turn. The man beside me is younger than Arjun, and I recognize him immediately. Mid-to-late twenties, maybe. He has the Kapoor cheekbones, sharp and elegant, but his face is warmer, more open, with a wide, easy smile that suggests he has spent his life being the person in the room that everyone likes. His eyes are dark and intelligent, and he’s dressed in a beautifully tailored navy kurta that he wears confidently.
“I'm Yash,” he says, extending his hand. “Arjun's brother. The younger, more charming, significantly less terrifying one.”
I shake his hand. His grip’s warm and firm and carries the kind of simple confidence that doesn't need to prove anything. “I've heard about you from the dossier. Threat level: green.”
Yash laughs, delighted. “He rated me green? That's the lowest tier; I’m almost offended! I’m certain Sunita got red. Even Karan must have merited a yellow.”
“I think green means he trusts you.”
Something shifts in Yash's expression. The easy charm softens into something quieter, more real. “Yeah,” he says. “I think it might.”
He picks up a samosa from the communal plate between us and takes a bite, chewing thoughtfully. The festival swirls around us: music, lanterns, laughter, the distant sound of children's sparklers fizzing in the dark. Somewhere in the crowd, Karan’s attempting to teach a group of local teenagers a dance move that involves a spin and a clap that he cannot execute simultaneously.
“Every time he visits, I'm somewhere else,” Yash says. “Arjun, that is. It's been over a year since I've actually been in the same room as him. Mother always seems to have business for me in Mumbai or Delhi the exact week he flies in. I used to thinkit was coincidence. Now I think she doesn't want us comparing notes.” He gives a wry, knowing smile. “He calls Mother once a week, discusses the weather and his surgical schedule, and hangs up. He calls me once a month, and it's better, but it's still...” He searches for the word. “Curated. Everything with Arjun is curated. He gives you exactly what he thinks you can handle and keeps the rest locked in a vault.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know that vault, intimately.”
“But here's the thing.” Yash turns to face me on the wall, his dark eyes steady and earnest. “He's different this time. And I don't mean a little different. I mean fundamentally, structurally, something-has-changed-at-the-foundation different. I wasn't at the dinner, but Sunita's WhatsApp dispatch was so detailed it practically came with footnotes and citations. He defended you to Mother in front of the entire family at dinner, Casey. My brother, who has spent his entire life avoiding conflict with Mother the way a submarine avoids the surface, stood up at a dinner table and told her she was wrong. Sunita used the word 'unprecedented.' Sunita does not use that word lightly.”
“That was a few nights ago, actually.”
“And the family is still talking about it! They will be talking about it at Christmas. They will be talking about it at my wedding, if that happens, and probably at my funeral. It is the single most shocking thing that has happened at a Kapoor dinner since Uncle Vikram and the bread roll, and nobody can even agree on when exactly that happened or even if it really did or if it has just evolved into family mythology.”
He pauses. His expression has gone serious, the easy charm replaced by something deeper, something that looks a lot like a younger brother who loves his older brother and has been worried about him for a very long time.
“Do you know why he left?” Yash asks.
“For medicine. For his career.”
“That's what he tells people. And it's true, as far as it goes. But it doesn't go far enough.” Yash looks at the festival, at the lanternsand the dancers and the flickering diyas. “He left because he was suffocating. Mother's expectations, the family name, the social obligations, the constant, relentless pressure to be perfect. To be the heir. To be the Kapoor that everyone needed him to be. He was twenty-two when he went to Cambridge, and I was seventeen, and I watched him pack his bags and I knew, I knew with absolute certainty, that if he stayed, the pressure would break him.”
I think about that. About a twenty-two-year-old Arjun, polished and pristine and already cracking somewhere nobody could see.
“Did he know?” I ask. “That he was going to break?”
“I don't think he had a word for it. He had a plan, and the plan was Cambridge, and the plan was medicine, and the plan wasout. He told everyone, including himself, that it was about training. The best programmes, the best mentors, the necessary credentials.” Yash's mouth quirks. “Arjun has always been very good at giving his decisions a professional reason. It saves him from having to admit they had a personal one.”
“But you knew.”
“I was seventeen and I shared a wall with him. I heard him pacing at three in the morning for the entire year before he left. You don't pace because you're excited about going to school.” Yash watches a child dart between two dancers, laughing. “I think he believed he was going somewhere he could breathe. He talked about it once, the summer before Cambridge. He said in England nobody would know whose son he was. He said it like it was the most extraordinary gift anyone could be given. To walk into a room and just be a person.”
“And was it?”
“For about six months.” Yash's smile is wry. “And then he realized something the rest of us could have told him, if he'd asked. The walls weren't the family. The walls were inside him. He carried them to Cambridge, and then to Edinburgh, and then across an ocean to Toronto, and at every stop he built them a littlehigher, because the only thing more frightening than being suffocated is being free and discovering you don't actually know how to live any other way.”
The music changes. Something slower, more melodic. The dancing shifts from energetic to swaying.
“And he stayed gone.” Yash's voice is matter-of-fact, not bitter. “Every year the calls got shorter and the visits got rarer, and I stayed here. Someone had to. Someone had to absorb Mother's expectations, manage the family businesses in India, attend the events, be the Kapoor in residence while she's back in London. And I don't resent it. I chose it. But I chose it partly so that Arjun could choose to leave, and I need you to understand what that cost him.”
“What did it cost him?”
“Everything comfortable. Everything familiar. Every relationship that was easy, every connection that was automatic. He traded a sandstone palace for a concrete condo. He traded a family name that opens every door for a hospital where nobody knows who his mother or grandmother is. He traded warmth for a Canadian winter.” Yash smiles, a small, sad, fond smile. “And then he spent years building walls so thick that nobody in Toronto could see how lonely he was. Until, apparently, you arrived.”
“I'm not...” I start, and stop. “I don't know if I'm the right person for what you're describing. I'm just a guy from Huntsville who does magic tricks and eats terrible food. I don't know how to fix all those years of loneliness.”
“You don't have to fix it. You just have to be in the room.” Yash puts his hand on my shoulder. It’s a warm, steady, uncomplicated touch, the touch of a man who has his mother's critical intelligence and his brother's fierce loyalty and none of either's difficulty with physical affection. “My brother chose you, Casey. I arrived at this festival two hours ago, and in those two hours, I've watched my brother scan the crowd for you approximately forty times. His shoulders drop when hefinds you. I've never seen that. I've never seen him drop anything.” He squeezes my shoulder. “I don't think he made a mistake.”