The Same Direction

29. At Least For Now

Arjun's POV :

With the usual chaos maker in the family Ananya, out of the way, peace should've prevailed in our house. But that evening turned out to be one of the most uncomfortable ones ever. In my whole life. And that's saying something.

Almost half an hour before Dr Ashwin and his wife and son were about to arrive, mom had gone to Janvi's room with an old salwar suit of hers.

"I wore this when your parents came to see me to fix my marriage with Raj", she told Janvi crisply, anybody else would've expected her to be tearful but I knew better. Mom wasn't one to get emotional at these times. I could see she was very keen to get this alliance fixed "We're not real sisters but we've rarely been anything less than that. Take it as my request. I'd like you to wear this today evening", she said.

Janvi took it reluctantly. I could totally see an inner storm building up inside her head. I wondered what she had up her sleeve. Would she say yes? No way! But the sparks would fly if she dared to openly reject Mr Columbia Graduate.

                                        ~~~~~~

When the door bell rang, mom called for Arav to open it. He got up and reluctantly hovered towards the door. He wrenched it open weakly and then awkwardly moved to the background as quickly as he could. Dad went forward to welcome our guests.  I stood further behind Arav hoping that they would mistake me for a part of the wall.

"Arjun! Go see if Janvi is ready!" Mom gave me a sharp nudge in the ribs.

Too glad to find an escape, I dashed over to Janvi's room and knocked the door, "Jan! They're here!" I mouthed "Are you ready?"

Silence.

"Hey? Are you there?" I asked.

I heard the bathroom door inside open and close and then I heard Janvi, "What? So soon? I'm not ready yet Arjun. Give me five minutes. Tell your mom I'll be there soon".

"Alright", I said and trotted back to the living room as slowly as I could.

Our guests had already taken the couch. It was just three people like we had expected. The doctor couple and their doctor son. But they were totally different from the two people I had seen as personifications of the word 'doctor' all my life - my parents.

Unlike mom and dad, both Dr Ashwin and Dr Veena were enormous and took up almost the entire sofa. They were dressed as if they were already coming for a wedding.

Dr Ashwin was wearing a visibly expensive suit  and his wife was wearing what I could make out as a designer saree, probably Gucci and at least half a kilo of unnecessary jewelry adorned her. She wore big jhumkas and makeup which was too cakey and not suitable for her age seeing that she would be at least ten years older than my mom. A handbag sat next to her and she had made sure the Louis Vuitton label on it was visible to us.

These two were clearly not surgical cardiologists. Perhaps, they just ran the hospital and took care of the management.

I looked at their son who was also in a suit. Compared to his parents, he was lookable. And much fitter. He had managed to screw into the same sofa with his parents. But he was no hunk. He was a total chump compared to Shaheer who looked like a Hindi TV show star.

Compared to my level headed and grounded parents, this family was clearly a bunch of brats. I totally couldn't understand why mom and dad were dying to impress them. I couldn't even picture Janvi having these dodos as her in-laws. There was no way my aunt was going to marry this buffoon. I mean, Janvi's a perfect ten. This guy wasn't even a five!

We just had to wait for Janvi to come and reject him.

Arav had clearly been introduced already. He was now miserably handing out coffee and onion pakodas that mom had got made by Radhika that afternoon.