The Wrong Indian Flag | LGBTQ+[ON HOLD]

|7| screw the patriarchy and the principal

"Oh, god this tastes fucking amazing, darling! How can anything be this good? How did you learn to cook this well? Indian food like biriyani and paneer and chole is just yum, but I hadn't realized South Indian food could be this yummy," Alisha exclaims, as she licks her fingers clean, although the plate still holds trace amounts of onion chutney.

I view her with the faintest bit of disgust. Despite considering myself a foodie, I cannot fathom licking fingers clean regardless of the deliciousness of the meal. On the other hand, the plate had to be neat for me and with little residue. Maybe it was just my increasingly need for cleanliness overriding my love for food.

It's the day after Tara's program and Alisha and I are chilling at my home. She decided to stay over the night but Tara's parents weren't having any of it; just her musical performance was pushing their limits of going outside, but a sleepover on top of it? No way.

I ended up waking up quite early today (or perhaps I hadn't slept much at all), overanalyzing what I had blurted out yesterday. To take my mind off things, I decided to cook for Alisha. Needless to say, that venture didn't help much at all.

'I would much rather kiss you,' rings in my ear again and again and again, a constant pounding in my head. The thought would be easy to banish if it weren't for the fact that very vivid images of doing that act didn't accompany every chime.

"Both my parents are half Tamilian, half North Indian," I reply as I cross my legs over each other on top of the bed's teal comforters. "However, they both predominantly speak Hindi as they both grew up in Delhi. They met and got married when they migrated here to Chennai for college. We do speak Tamil at home sometimes, but I am more fluent than both of them because I learned it at a subject in school and they didn't speak it much growing up."

Alisha raises her thick eyebrows as she pulls her mouth downwards. "I didn't know that! No wonder it tastes like authentic south Indian food."

"Yes. My mom decided I would not spend the summer break after 10th grade doing nothing so she taught me how to cook, wash clothes, sew and learn how to drive a two-wheeler bike, though it isn't one-hundred percent legal." I give her a soft grin.

Alisha gives me a soft grin back, before looking up at the clock hanging above the table she is sitting on. "You don't strike me as a rule-breaker. By the way, where is Tara? I thought she was meeting us in the morning. She's been sending me memes non-stop from eight in the morning."

"I am not. I screamed at my mom so much that we nearly go into an accident on account of her wanting to slap me to stop being such a crybaby." I roll my eyes. "Also, Tara just texted me five minutes ago. She got her periods and won't be able to make it. Hers are...very intense."

Alisha scrunches her nose up as her eyebrows pull down in pity. "That's awful. Honestly, periods are the bloody worst, pun absolutely intended. None of us asked for a subscription to Lucifer's monthly waterfall."