Chapter 1: The Weight of Silence
The tea in Meera's cup had gone cold, a thin film forming over the surface. Across the mahogany dining table, her father, a man whose silence carried the weight of three generations, turned a page of the morning newspaper.
"The Sharmas called," he said, not looking up. "Their son is back from London. A surgeon. Good family."
Meera felt a familiar tightness in her chest. For years, she had played the part of the dutiful daughter, moving through life like a ghost in a script written before she was born. But in her pocket, her phone vibrated—a message from Kabir.
I'm outside. Five minutes?"
Kabir was everything the Sharmas' son was not. He was an artist who smelled of turpentine and cigarettes, a man whose lineage didn't trace back to the right zip codes or the right surnames. He was the "wrong" choice, and he was the only thing in Meera's life that felt real.