Written in the Stars by Divya Anand

Author:Divya Anand [Anand, Divya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789354920202
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2021-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

By the time I changed and went back downstairs, I hoped Abhimanyu had left. I was wearing the bright orange anarkali. It was a weird length on me because I was taller than Sahana. She had got her revenge by giving me something she must’ve purchased post-partum. It dipped dangerously low at the cleavage thanks to the bad fit. I tugged at the neckline hoping I wouldn’t accidentally flash my entire family. I entered the living room and stopped in shock. I stared open-mouthed at the scene in front of me.

Abhimanyu was standing at the centre of a group of my relatives, regaling them with some story. The group had my father’s sister Vasantha Athai and her daughter Janaki, a duo I tried to avoid with utmost diligence at all family gatherings. Even worse, I spotted Ambi Mama, who had found an unsuspecting victim in Abhimanyu. Ambi Mama was a random uncle who was related to us in some way that nobody remembered. Every Tamilian family has an Ambi Mama, and he attended all our family functions as the token Ambi of ours. I knew I would have to go there and extricate Abhimanyu before Mama latched on to some random story and bored him to death. Inaya had wisely taken stock of the situation and abandoned Abhimanyu. She was now sitting in a corner reading a library copy of Anne of Green Gables. That explained her sudden obsession with kindred spirits. Her friends were sitting next to her, trying to put together a complicated jigsaw puzzle.

I took a deep breath and walked up to the group.

‘Ah, you changed,’ said Abhimanyu with a grin. I tugged at the neckline yet again and then folded my arms across my chest hoping to cover up.

‘Hi, kanna*! What a lovely kurta,’ said Vasantha Athai. ‘So bright!’

‘It’s Sahana’s,’ I admitted, knowing that Athai didn’t mean ‘bright’ as a compliment. I was sure the outfit looked fantastic on Sahana. But I was really not doing it any justice, given my constant tugging at the neck and the fact that I had visions of myself looking like a giant, fat, shiny orange.

‘That explains it,’ Janaki said, going on the offensive immediately as was her wont when it came to me. ‘It’s really not your type of outfit, no? You normally wear those washed out colours! Remember the last time we met, I thought your brand new kurta was a second-hand one!’

She tittered. Janaki had hated me ever since we were kids, because our grandmothers had dedicated their lives to making us compete with each other in everything ranging from our marks at school to who wore the bigger pottu.** Unfortunately for her, I regularly won. That hate remained unwavering till this day. We often regressed to our childhood selves the minute we were near each other. I made a mental note to try and be the bigger person today.

‘I had to come directly from work and didn’t have time to change,’ I explained politely. ‘All of

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