Love Happens

5

At the pub, Ananya and her friend stood at the bar. While her friend sipped from her drink, Ananya got to thinking. She stared at the half-filled glass of grape liquor. She could hear ambiguous and unclear voices in her head from people she had never heard from. The voices were in a hazy whisper. She couldn't get a single word from them. She gave it her attention. She tried to match the words and make at least a sentence out of those whispers. All she understood was a name, which was Anand.

"Ananya!"

Her friend's voice ferried her to the present. She blinked and smiled, humming in response.

"Won't you drink? You promised me. You said you'd have your first drink before your birthday. Come on, I don't know why you've been dodging this. It's normal in America. People don't judge. You can drink as much as you wish. It's sweet. Try it."

"I don't know. I'm not comfortable. It's addicting. I don't wish to get addicted."

"I wonder how your father, despite being the senior, is more modern than you. Had he been here, he'd order..."

"The most expensive because he doesn't settle for ordinary. I also wonder at times how I can't drink, even though I used to in the past before my accident."

"That reminds me. Your father asked me to ensure you take your pills daily."

"I can't rely on pills all my life. Additionally, pills I have no idea what I'm taking them for."

"It's for your health."

"I don't have a disease. If I did, it would show effects by now since it has been two weeks since I last took them. Except for strange voices I hear in my head, which at times make me drowsy and dizzy, I'm good."

The man who Ananya signed on his body showed up and asked for a glass from the bartender. He gulped it down in an attempt to impress her.

"Let's leave this place."

Ananya left the building and waited in the car. She started seeing unclear visions, which she has been seeing since the next day when she stopped taking her medications of people she didn't know. She also continued to hear those voices that would keep uttering the name Shraddha and something related to India, where her father lived. She had never visited there because she was prohibited from doing so. Her father would visit America when he wished to meet her and also leave when he wished. But for his seventieth birthday, she was planning to surprise him by going there. He told her work wouldn't let him find the time to celebrate it here, but he would visit a week later. She didn't want him to visit. She wanted to go meet him herself this time and also see what India had that he was trying to keep her away from. He said the weather was different from America, and she couldn't
handle the sun. She wanted to experience it herself.

The visions she saw cleared, and her surroundings returned.

"Let's go."

"Have you gotten the tickets ready?"

She drove through the city to her apartment.

"Yes. The flight will leave in two days."

"Perfect. We will arrive on the night of his birthday."

"All is good, but are you sure? Visiting Mumbai all on our own for the first time. Do you not think it is dangerous? I've heard there's pocket-picking at the airport. Moreover, you don't know exactly where your address is."

"He is a renowned person in India. I'll show a picture of him, and people will guide me to his address. When I reach him, I'll give him a call."

"I hope it goes as you plan."