Not All Those Who Wander by Arjun Nath

Author:Arjun Nath [Nath, Arjun]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789353057749
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2020-02-08T00:00:00+00:00

10

Gehna was a big fan of birthdays, especially her own. She had been dropping hints about it in casual conversation for a month, but the time for subtlety was long past.

‘It is now officially the start of birthday week,’ she announced to her mother on the morning of 8 September.

Nina Rai, with Druhi’s help, was wholly engaged in sorting through her children’s old baby things that she had stored away in two giant aluminium trunks. She barely even noticed that her daughter had joined them in the master bedroom.

‘I said,’ Gehna said, louder this time, ‘it’s my birthday in one week.’

‘Mm? I’m your mother, Gehna, I know when your birthday is. There’s no need to shout it from the rooftops. You’re only turning seventeen, it’s not a major milestone or anything.’

‘Eighteen. Not seventeen, eighteen. What kind of mom forgets how old her kid is?’ Gehna was horrified. Then she took a closer look at her mother. ‘Oh. You’re joking. You made a joke. Nice one, Nina. Ha-larious.’

Gehna flopped down on a couch. She watched her mother coo and fawn over the onesies and baby blankets that were spilling out of the trunks. Even Druhi, usually so poised, was pulling the kind of goofy faces that people made when there was an actual baby nearby.

Nina’s becoming soft, she thought. I don’t even know her any more. Where’s the she-wolf gone? Look at the two of them. They’re all like ‘awww’. I don’t get it. I should be the one who’s all ‘awww’. It’s like everyone else around here is turning into this glowy Earth Mother-type person. Me? I’m just pukey and gross.

In her copy of What To Expect When You’re Expecting, which Eram had given her as a first ultrasound present, it said that a baby bump could appear at any time depending on whether it was your first pregnancy, how thin you were, how strong your abs were and how many babies you were carrying. Truth be told, Gehna hadn’t managed to get too deep into the baby bible because it was six hundred pages of information overload and most of it was frightening.

She slipped a hand under her tank top and felt her stomach. It was definitely bigger, or at least rounder, than yesterday. There were bulgy bits in places where there shouldn’t be any bulgy bits. Last night in bed she had sent Eram an unfiltered photo of her tummy to prove that she was getting fat since he always insisted that she wasn’t. He hadn’t replied immediately and she had died a dozen deaths until he did. Some people just didn’t get that it was called instant messaging for a reason.

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