Can't Escape Love

Chapter 1

Dr Tara Roy rubbed her eyes, pinched her arm and reread the email she had received from her father. No, she was not hallucinating and yes, the email was a demand to come home to Melville. Even when worded as a request or a plea, any communication was still an exercise of the invisible authority that Indian parents held over their offspring, throughout their lives. Reject the authority and you might as well find yourself disowned, she thought. No, that was not true, her parents had been considerate and patient until now and if her parents, after decades of toiling for the health and well-being of others, needed the relaxation that retirement could afford them, then Tara had to finally after 8 years, go back home. The email readTara mere bacche,How are you doing? We have been trying to call you since the last two weeks, but it appears your camp has lost cell reception again. Please call when you read this email. We wanted to check if you have booked your tickets to fly back home, beta. The hospital really needs you now that we both have had to cut back our hours and are planning for retirement within the year. Just let us know if your commitments have changed so that I can ask Dr.Sisodia to look for temporary replacements here until you get back.Your mother sends her loveLove, DadTara's current assignment with the Doctors Without Borders would end in two weeks. She was in talks to extend the assignment by an additional year. Those talks would have to be tabled now. Her camp had lost all cell reception and internet connectivity during the last thunderstorm a fortnight back. She pulled out her phone but cell reception had not been restored yet. She would have to make do with the patchy internet connection then. She first wrote a short email to the program director at Doctors Without Borders, conveying her regret at not being able to renew her contract to continue in her position as head cardiothoracic surgeon of the camp at Malawi, then booked her tickets and responded to her father.Dad,I am good, lost cell reception with the last thunderstorm. Will be heading home after my assignment ends on the 12th, that's exactly in 14 days. Attaching my itinerary.See you soon. Give love to ma.Love, TaraTara took a long breath after hitting send. It wasn't her parents fault that they had her late in life. As cardiothoracic surgeons themselves, Dr Rajan Roy and Dr Meera Chopra had had hectic lives as immigrant doctors and met at a medical conference when they both were in their late-thirties. By then, their respective parents had given up hope of marriage and children for the two of them. By the time they had Tara, Meera was thirty nine and Raj was on the other side of forty at forty one. As the only daughter of two perfectionist surgeon parents, Tara has started learning anatomy in her adolescence. She remembered falling asleep to her parents discussing about surgeries, cases and new techniques. Then she couldnt wait until she grew up and joined those discussions. "And what have I been doing since I completed my postgraduation- choosing one remote corner of the world after another, volunteering services to the poor and underserved, all the while making my parents stay away from their only daughter" she thought.

Not that her parents complained. During every chat or call, they never missed to tell her how proud they were, boasting about their daughter's goodwill to all their friends and the occasional stranger.  But now, they were slowing down, all the years of 100 plus hours per week taking a toll. It was time for them to retire and travel like her mom always wanted to. Her only complaint with their high powered lifestyle was that she never got to travel anywhere except India for pleasure.

Growing up, her parents had always sent her to her grandparents' home in Ludhiana during the summers, and themselves had taken two weeks off every summer to spend with family in India. Those summer days were some of the best memories of her life. Running amok in her maternal grandfather's sugarcane and mustard fields with her cousins and the farm dogs was the stuff idyllic childhood dreams were made of. The only memories that even held a candle to the freedom in those were of her and Jai, sitting and talking at the willow tree at college and the long drives from college to Melville  with Jai. There always was a sense of oneness when she was with Jai, like there were no taboo topics, no judgments and no recriminations. Until everything changed. Tara did not want to think about Jai now, lest her thoughts weakened her already shaky resolve to go to Melville. Home, where Jai had, per the gossip she got regularly from Ma set up his architecture firm. Where he was seen regularly at parties with a steady girlfriend by his side. Home, where his dad co-owned the Sacred Heart Hospital with her parents. And lastly home, where Jai's brother Dr. Kabir Sisodia worked at the same hospital as she was honor bound to join.

It would be awkward to work in the same hospital as Kabir she mused. It had always been awkward between Kabir and her since her first term in college at sixteen when he had asked her out and she had refused. The refusal had been the proverbial elephant in the room in all their future interactions, with Kabir showing off whoever had the bad judgment to be his latest arm candy and her ignoring his existence. Their mutual dislike was the one thing that Jai never caught on, perceptive as he was. In all fairness, Kabir should have thanked Tara, it was only because of her that the hottest cheerleader in the college, Amy Warkoff had agreed to date him. Tara had to bribe her with chemistry assignments for Amy to approach Kabir for a date. Once Amy had her claws in him, Kabir forgot all about bothering Tara with his passive aggressive behavior for the remaining two terms he spent in the same college as her.. But the Sisodias and the Roys were friends and doctors at the same hospital. So she continued to meet Kabir with his family at parties in Melville while he was completing his orthopedic specialty training in New York. Distance had not had any effect on his bruised pride. He was doubly upset that Tara has decided to date an Economics student, a mediocre one at that, after rejecting him.

Fahad Karim, in addition to being a mediocre Economics student at a local community college had numerous tattoos and was a biker. He was nowhere near as good looking as the Sisodia brothers, his one redeeming quality was that he was madly in love with Tara and not afraid to show it. He had followed her around like a lost puppy until she agreed to a date and then charmed her with poetry and small gestures that made her feel special. Unlike Kabir, he was humble and did not take anything for granted in the beginning of their relationship. He did not object to her closeness to Jai, which now with hindsight Tara realized was just his way of not rocking the boat. Fahad knew that given a choice between a new boyfriend and a childhood friend, Tara would not choose in his favor. So he had whiled his time, slowly eroding the trust between friends who had shared a decade of togetherness until the chasm was too deep and wide for any explanation to cross. Tara knew now that every time Fahad met Jai, Jai's superiority in looks, height and financial situation along with the lifelong conenction he shared with Tara had pinched at him. Fahad had also identified Jai's infatuation with her and used it to create havoc in their lives. But he had overestimated his influence over Tara. Tara had dropped him like a hot potato once she connected the dots, but the damage she herself did to her relationship with Jai afterwards was catastrophic. She had made Jai choose, but Jai chose family over her. Jai chose to believe Kabir over her.

Somehow they had kept all their disagreements from their parents. Tara moved to California at the beginning of her last term and elected to complete her residency in Stanford. She then went to England to continue her specialty learning, worked in London and had been with Doctors Without Borders for the last 5 years. Now, Fahad was out her life completely, Kabir was happily married to a litigator, Sonia Sisodia and Jai was dating a model called Natasha. Tara's mother kept lamenting that at ten years her junior, Jai's mom had a much higher chance of seeing her grandchildren grow up than her because Tara had nothing but one ill-advised and broken engagement to show for the last eight years of living abroad.

Tara sent out an email to her co-workers in the Malawi camp, outlining her plan to leave at the end of her current engagement. She had been a little homesick these past few months, delaying her decision to stay till the last minute. "It is as Ma says, the Gods decide for us" she thought.

**Mere bacche - my child

**Beta - child