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30 - Introductions

  k so yeah this chapter is important for later (much later) in the story

and the picture on the side. guess who it is

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30 - Introductions

Maya Sumedh

Plans were made for Diwali once the SAT was out of the way – and were met with mixed reaction by the family – “Chennai? No effing way!” (Sam), “Chennai? Where’s that?” (Luke), “Whatever you want, Priya,” (Dad) and “Oh my God, Chennai? Yay!” (me).

 Chennai was home to my dad’s side of the family, which wasn’t much because half of them were abroad – two of his sisters had settled in Boston and Chicago respectively and his brothers were in Chennai. My cousins from this side were more...ah, sober as compared to Natasha, Arjun and the gang from my mum’s side. And also less in number – I had four cousins on this side, Tarika and Manini, who were only two and six years old respectively, Alia, who was my age, seventeen and home on break – she went to Bombay for college. I loved her to death even though we barely got to talk. She was a funky art student with a trendy coffee addiction and shorts hair, who’d been wearing hipster glasses long before they were the ‘in thing’ and she was so talented it wasn’t even funny. She barely got time to text me around college though.

 Her sister Jackie, who recently married her boyfriend of five years Yohan, a quiet but handsome half-Jewish half-Christian and fully Indian specimen she met whilst at college in Bombay and was now heavily pregnant with their first child, would also be there. Jackie was more quiet and homely, tall and thin with long brown hair and doe eyes. I liked her too, but Alia was more my type; Jackie and Sam got along like a house on fire.

 Besides Jackie and Alia, I loved the city – we’d lived there till I was nine and that’s when we shifted to Delhi. And it was refreshing down south, where the atmosphere was so completely different and just fucking awesome as compared to up here (except they boasted way too much about the Super Kings, like I get that you have the best IPL team but seriously?). Also the food was amazing. And the beach. The humidity was a downside, but I could deal with that. There was just something about Chennai that I liked, the warmth of the people and the homely feel of the shaded avenues and the kind old people and conventional newspapers, and the strange feeling Tamil had on my tongue.

 Since Diwali wasn’t a huge thing in Lay’s house on account of them being Christian and all, she was coming with us. We were dropping Blu off at their place, her mum loved dogs and said she’d be more than happy to take care of him. I hadn’t seen Mrs. D’Souza in ages, I kind of missed her.

 I hoped Lay and Sam would figure things out before we left, and at the same time I didn’t intervene. If it had to happen, it would.

 So anyway – we got two days to pack and plan the four days we were spending down there. Luke, Sam and Dad were bought new sherwanis, I got a new lehenga and Ma bought like five saris (of course). The lehenga showed an embarrassing amount of skin, especially on my midriff, but I could handle it. It was pretty, cream and pink with a green dupatta with silver zari and it also cost a bomb (I gagged when I saw the price tag – who the fuck pays twenty thousand bucks for a lehenga?) but Ma pooh-pooh’ed with her hand and went all it’s Tarun Tahiliani darling, you really can’t expect any less so I just went along with it.  

 We were set to leave early on Wednesday morning, around nine o clock. Luke, as usual, was responsibly packed, and excused himself to his room after breakfast (“I have to Skype before we leave”), Sam ran off to pack his stuff and Dad had some last minute work to catch up on, so I was stuck with Ma in the linen room sorting out the stuff that had been washed and which needed to be packed.