Adhithan's kitchen had a fairish sized poster of Chef Anthony Bourdain's quote.
It was a blown-up, black and white picture of Anthony Bourdain, with the text, 'When someone cooks for you, they are saying something. They are telling you about themselves: where they come from, who they are, what makes them happy.' written on it, brightly, and in a slightly, scattered handwriting.
Amrutha's shoulder crashed on the crooked doorway of Adhithan's well-kept kitchen, her eyes steadily shifted over to her brother's back, who was cooling her dose of filter coffee and pouring it in the cerulean blue, handbuilt, ceramic mug that she'd presented him when he moved into this house.
Retracing her steps back to the living room, she sat down at the wooden, antique swing. Adhithan followed her, his hands holding out two mugs filled with strongly brewed, frothy, filter coffees.
As he handed over her token in her hands, Amrutha's lips parted a bit to take in a trivial, testing sip, hesitantly.
Adhithan blew a waft of breath into his coffee, clearing the cap of froth, and took in his first sip.
"That poster on the wall," Amrutha started, slow and steady, "that's not your handwriting."
Adhithan peered up at Amrutha once. And lowered his attention to his coffee as if there was a punch about to land on his face. With that ominous silence weighing upon them, he finished taking the last sip of his coffee without giving out any verbal reply to his sister.
Amrutha's persistent, unsettling glare did not help him stay mum anymore, hence he broke the leery stillness, "that's by Ru..." by muttering low and soft, "Rumi."
She took in the final sip of her coffee in a swig. "Okay... so did you talk to her?"
"I did not tell her anything,"stating it with great reluctance, he added, "yet."
Amrutha leaned back at the iron chain of the swing, as she kept lulling her hands on the swell of her belly. "Okay?"
Adhithan, perceiving her unease to lean back, roused from the swing and ambled into the passage that ushered him to his modest bedroom, study, all-in-one room that was furnished with a bed on the floor right under a couple of wooden windows, with books about cooking, baking, and various artistries stacked up in the shelves adjacent to it.
He grabbed a pillow from the head side of his bed, and returned to Amrutha, who was looking out for him with an appeased smile.
"But she told me a lot of things," continuing with a shoddy smile, Adhithan propped up the pillow at her back, and helped her reposition herself on the smooth surface of the hickory brown swing. "She told me that she moved here before seven months, only to cope up with her father's demise."
Adhithan walked around Amrutha to get seated on the swing, with one leg folded, and the other one delicately sweeping his mosaic floor, pushing the swing smoothly.
"It has taken like several months for her to get her loan approved from a bank here, in Chennai," he narrated, carefully, so much that it made her astonish if he'd actually been there with Rumi, all along, "and even after four months of setting up her vet clinic, it hasn't started to take off very well, yet."
With an amused expression melding on her round face, her brows shot up, Amrutha probed, "Have you ever seen yourself while talking about her?"
Adhithan, dragging himself out of his pensiveness, lifted his face to her elated eyes. "What?"
Amrutha took in an extensive inhale, and sighed. "It is so evident that you like that rude girl—"
"Ammu, she is not a rude girl," he impeded, swiftly. "It's just that I call her that."
