The Three Good Girls!

Adya in Delhi

As the train screeched to a halt Adya awoke with a start and gathered up her belongings.
Her cousin was here to meet her she remembered, a young girl full of life she remembered meeting briefly  a few years ago. A skinny thing, daughter of her one rebellious aunt,the one who half the family adored and the other half despised. 'The divorcee' she heard some aunt of aunt with hideous red bindi remark.
Smallest skinniest girl she remembered!    
Priyanka,
Pixie she corrected herself and smiled.

She hurried onto the platform, pixie was there waving frantically. Adya said hi, pixie gave her a hug. A small thing full of life and a beautiful creature full of love.

They scurried past the sour smelling station, Adya seemed to relish with some awe the swarming sea of humanity, the stench, the noise of everyone trying to be someone.
They caught a taxi, pixie haggled about the fare and they were on way.

Adya's aunt Manisha was a tall dusky woman, too dark to ever find a suitable groom in their small town it was not without some admiration the aunties gossiped about how she had run away with the  researcher in town from London, it had been a whirlwind affair, and a scandalous elopement, followed by a brief marriage involving three continents, a young daughter, violence  and a calmer divorce. Her aunt never went back to her home, she settled in Delhi, there was still something to be made of life which did not involve every other aunt giving her a hard time over having made their own marriages work with lectures over compromises and their eyes that never lit up any more lighting up at her expense.

Manisha welcomed her with a smile that reached her eyes, there was that calmness you find in people who have no one to compete with, that contentment in her. She seemed oddly, full of hope, like she had used every fall as a stepping stone to rise higher. She wore a long Pakistani kurta, with a big black bindi on her forehead, the colour of chocolate on her skin, and the same sharp features that pixie had inherited. She was beautiful, not the beauty that was seeking approval, the beauty that made others want to be approved.
She wrote in a lifestyle magazine now, she ran a blog and was involved with innumerable NGOs. She had promised to throw in a word for Adya to intern at her magazine, but that will be all she had said. 'If you want a place in that office  Adya, you better be the one to create it'
Of course no one knew Adya also had other reasons to be in Delhi.
Those she kept to herself, and herself alone.