Arranged marriage was an age-old story that Khushi, the youngest of the infamous Gupta family, who revolutionized and dominated the trading market for generations, knew well.
For it was the only thing she heard growing up.
But that neither prepared...
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Khushi was stressed.
Perhaps even more so than when she was giving her medical board exams.
It had been a few hours since Arnav unsuspectingly left for work, beckoned by Shyam, who on her orders was keeping him at the company until she could get his birthday surprise organized at the penthouse. The entire Raizada clan was sweet (and efficient) that way. Lavanya –the designated party planner of the family– had asked her amidst Holi, almost a month ago now, if she needed any help planning Arnav's birthday. Khushi thanked her for offering, but after a week of deliberating, decided against it.
How could she forget the overwhelming feeling that had engulfed her last December, when Arnav threw a surprise party for her birthday? It had been the first time she had seen someone outside of her immediate family go out of their way to make her happy. So, it was only fitting that she did the same for him: a first of sorts, something that wasn't the norm.
The only question was, what exactly. Throwing him a grand party like the Raizada's suggested seemed silly; it was obvious that he had plenty of those growing up. Taking him to a fancy dinner like Vihaan suggested also seemed equally silly. What was the point of going to a ridiculously expensive restaurant when he cooked better than all of them?
And that's when the idea came: why not cook for him?
Even a blind man could see how much effort Arnav put in on a regular basis for their dinner –not to mention, his five course Spanish meal last week was un-freaking-believable– so, what better than cooking to show him that she valued him just as much as he did her, if not more?
And so, her plan had been set. She started by taking the day off from the hospital –while pretending, of course, to Arnav that she was ignorant of the occasion– requested the Raizada's to keep their son occupied until seven o'clock in the evening, and searched practically the entire internet for a recipe that would be easy enough to pull off without much room for error.
That's pretty much where things stopped being straightforward.
Perhaps, she should have seen it coming. Afterall, Khushi was aware that she wasn't a great cook. Despite plenty of forced lessons from her mother while growing up, she didn't manage to master the culinary arts as well as her family would've liked. Her greatest achievement in the kitchen, to date, remains being able to make her rotis round and unburnt, her dal soft and flowing, her sabji spicy and flavorful. That had been enough to gain freedom from those wretched cooking lessons and also fool her into thinking that she could make pizza –the main and only course tonight– from scratch.
She could not have been more wrong.
Either the recipe she had printed off was highly misleading or she was grossly incompetent, whatever the case may be, the classic Italian dish was going nowhere according to plan. The dough, despite adding enough water and yeast, was stiff, almost like rubber, and the tomato sauce wasn't thickening like it was supposed to.
